Foreigners held for smuggling ₹6-cr gold

The six arrested Myanmaris were identified as Thin Thin Nwe, Ei Wai Wai OO, Myint Sandar Aung, Win L Win, Ye Htut, Zaw Win Maung. The police have also nabbed Mohd Abid, a resident of Daryaganj in Delhi.

A Delhi court has sent six persons from Myanmar and an Indian national to two weeks of judicial custody after they were arrested for smuggling 18 kilos of “foreign origin gold”. The value of this gold was estimated to be over ₹6 crore.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) intercepted the seven at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport as they were coming to India from Bangkok in an Air India flight. (HT Photo)

The six arrested Myanmaris were identified as Thin Thin Nwe, Ei Wai Wai OO, Myint Sandar Aung, Win L Win, Ye Htut, Zaw Win Maung. The police have also nabbed Mohd Abid, a resident of Daryaganj in Delhi.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) intercepted the seven at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport as they were coming to India from Bangkok in an Air India flight. After serving notice under the customs act, DRI officials conducted personal search of each of the passengers and they recovered four pieces of metal bars from the shoes worn by each passenger.

“Each passenger was carrying one piece, weighing one kilo and one cut piece weighing 500 gram in each shoe,” DRI informed the court. These metal pieces were wrapped with black adhesive tape. Upon removal, they were found to be foreign origin metal bars “bearing marking pf Bangkok Gold Assay”. The yellow metal bars were checked by the customs’ jewellery appraiser at IGI airport, he confirmed them to be gold bars.

The DRI informed the court that the six passengers could not produce any document for bonafide import of the gold bars and it was, therefore, seized from them. The accused recorded their statement in the DRI office with the help of an interpreter, where they admitted “that the recovery and seizure of gold and conspiracy and smuggling of gold on their earlier visits,” DRI submitted before the court.

On the basis of the statements from the passengers, the officials conducted raids at a house in Daryaganj and recovered “photo copies of few documents” and three mobile phones belonging to , Mohammad Abid.

Abid, according to DRI, was suppose to take the delivery of the gold. Abid had been engaged in the business for last 15-16 years and had admitted to have been purchasing gold of foreign origin, submitted DRI.