Dubai passenger caught smuggling in gold worth ₹39 lakh at Chandigarh airport
Vrindaba Gohil, commissioner of customs, Ludhiana, said the woman was wearing the gold bangles on her upper arms and had hidden them under her shirt sleeves
Customs officers on Sunday caught a female passenger with 770 gm gold worth ₹39.90 lakh that was being illegally smuggled at the Chandigarh International Airport in the form of bangles.
The woman had arrived at the airport in an Indigo flight from Dubai at 4.30 pm.
Vrindaba Gohil, commissioner of customs, Ludhiana, said the woman was wearing the gold bangles on her upper arms and had hidden them under her shirt sleeves.
The officers intercepted her based on intelligence through the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and recovered two 24-carat gold bangles, weighing 385 gm each.
“The gold bangles were seized by the customs officers as they were being illegally imported into India. The passenger was arrested under Section 104 of the Customs Act, 1962,” she said.
5 seizures worth ₹1.07 crore in June
Gohil further stated that the Ludhiana Customs staff deployed at the Chandigarh International Airport had been closely monitoring smuggling activities and in June alone had detected five cases of gold smuggling. All these passengers were caught with the help of APIS.
The seized gold, weighing 2.1 kg and worth ₹1.07 crore, was being smuggled in the form of paste, capsules and gold rings around riveted buttons, etc.
Among these cases, on June 15, two passengers from Dubai were found smuggling 1.2 kg gold, valued at ₹61.04 lakh, in five capsules hidden in rectum.
On June 11, the customs staff had seized gold weighing 194.9 gm, valued at ₹10 lakh, which was concealed in the underpants of a passenger, who had also arrived from Dubai.
Gohil said currently, the airport catered to nine weekly flights to and from Dubai and Sharjah, and the customs officers, vide their alertness and agility, had thwarted several attempts of smuggling of gold and other contrabands.
A custom official, not wishing to be named, said the nearly ₹4,000 per gm difference in gold price between India and Dubai was pushing the illegal trade.
