DRI seizes gold worth ₹7.69 crore from two fliers
The DRI arrested two passengers at Mumbai airport, seizing 9.4 kg of smuggled gold worth ₹7.69 crore, linked to an international syndicate.
MUMBAI: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has arrested two passengers after seizing 9.4 kg of foreign–origin smuggled gold valued at ₹7.69 crore from them at the Mumbai airport.
Based on a specific tip-off, the DRI personnel on Wednesday intercepted the two passengers travelling with fake identities on a flight from Jaipur to Mumbai. Upon examining their baggage, three packets containing 9.487 kg of foreign-origin gold were found, DRI sources said.
During their interrogation, it came to light that the gold was being smuggled from Kuwait and they had retrieved it from an international flight by a person involved in an international smuggling syndicate, DRI sources said.
Both the passengers in their voluntary statements admitted that the smuggled gold was concealed in the international route of the flight, which they had retrieved, a DRI source said.
DRI’s probe revealed that the gold was allegedly concealed inside the aircraft at the time it left Kuwait for Mumbai as part of its international route, the sources said. Upon landing in Mumbai, the aircraft left for Jaipur. On the return trip to Mumbai, when the two passengers boarded the flight, they allegedly had the prior information on where exactly the smuggled gold lay concealed inside the aircraft, after which they retrieved it but got apprehended by the DRI on reaching Mumbai based on the specific intelligence that the agency had on them, the sources said.
“It is a usual modus operandi to smuggle gold by smuggling syndicates by concealing them inside an aircraft, for instance inside the pouches behind seats or bathrooms, only to be retrieved subsequently by a second set of carriers to evade detection. Such smugglers work on the belief that the checking by the DRI will be stringent with regard to an international flight when compared to a domestic flight,” a source said.
The DRI meanwhile is conducting further investigation to find out the identities of the passengers’ accomplices including those who smuggled the gold from Kuwait and concealed them inside the aircraft, the sources said.
The smuggled gold was seized, and the passengers were arrested under provisions of the Customs Act.
In August, the DRI, in a separate operation, had also seized 22.89 kilograms of smuggled gold valued at ₹16.91 crore in various forms (melted gold bars, egg-shaped capsules, strips and chains) from three persons in Mumbai, while they were allegedly moving them from one place to another in Mumbai Central. On further information that sale proceeds of another batch of smuggled gold worth ₹40 lakh were hidden in a house, the same was recovered and seized by the agency.