Two passengers from Dubai nabbed with 4 kg smuggled gold at Chandigarh airport

One of the passengers was found carrying four 1 kg bricks in his hand baggage, while the other was found in possession of five gold chains weighing 142 gm; both had arrived in Chandigarh from Dubai on an Indigo flight

The customs department on Thursday caught two passengers with 4,142 gm gold, which was being illegally smuggled at the Chandigarh International Airport.

A custom official said the nearly ₹4,000 per gm difference in gold price between India and Dubai was pushing the illegal trade. (Bloomberg)

Both passengers had arrived in the Indigo flight from Dubai at 4.30 pm.

“Based on intelligence through the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), the customs officers posted at the airport intercepted a passenger and recovered four gold bricks of 1 kg each. The passenger had hidden the gold bricks in his hand baggage inside a white towel,” said Vrindaba Gohil, commissioner of customs, Ludhiana. Customs officials also frisked another passenger from the same flight and recovered 142 gm gold in the form of five chains, which were concealed in clothes inside a backpack.

Gohil said since the resumption of international flights from the Chandigarh International Airport, many cases of gold smuggling in the form of biscuits and bricks had been detected by the alert customs staff.

A custom official, who did not want to be named, said the nearly ₹4,000 per gm difference in gold price in the two countries was pushing the illegal trade. “We are trying to establish if the passengers were couriers or owned the gold,” the official said.