Hyderabad: On the basis of specific intelligence, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials intercepted one male domestic passenger carrying gold paste in the form of 6 capsules at RGI Airport, Hyderabad, said an official statement.
The passenger was travelling from Hyderabad to Chennai on May 9, 2023.
The capsules were subject to heat treatment and gold weighing 2031.35 g of 99.5 per cent purity valued at Rs 1,30,00,640 was recovered.
It was learnt that these capsules were carried by an International transit passenger and handed over to this passenger through a small gap between the wall and the glass panel separating the International Departure Area and Domestic Departure Area at the airport, the statement added.
According to the statement, the gold has been seized and the passenger has been arrested and remanded to judicial custody under the provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.
Further investigation is underway.
In a recent operation carried out by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Mumbai, an international gold smuggler was intercepted along with 3.35 kgs of gold at Nagpur Airport on Tuesday.
According to an official statement from Narcotics Control Bureau, the person was coming from Saudi Arabia and had intended to hand over the seized contraband to another person. However, due to the heightened security measures and recent seizures of drugs and other prohibited items at Mumbai and other major international airports in the region, the smuggler had planned to smuggle the consignment through any other international airport.
Based on the inputs, NCB received additional information about an Indian person working in Jeddah who was to be tasked with the job.
“On May 8, 2023, specific information was figured out wherein the Indian person named A. Khan was identified, who was returning from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Nagpur. NCB officials immediately moved to Nagpur Airport and requested Nagpur Customs to stop A. Khan from leaving the airport,” the officials said.
During the search by the NCB Mumbai team, they found seven small white packets carefully stitched along the inner side of his jeans pant.
Upon further inspection, a semi-liquid paste of golden colour was recovered from each packet, which A. Khan confessed to be gold paste. Thorough searches were made to ensure that no other illegal items were concealed. The total weight of all the extracted gold paste material was found to be 3.35397 kgs.
The accused A Khan, a work permit-based skilled labourer, an electrician by profession, had been employed in a Saudi Arabia-based company for the last three years.
The case has been handed over to Nagpur Customs for detailed investigation as they are the competent authority in the matter.
