BENGALURU: The leniency towards elderly passengers and those with health problems while frisking them inside the Kempegowda International Airport is being exploited by the international gold smuggling network. The seizure of gold concealed in the waist belt of a passenger recently — the fifth such interception since January — clearly highlights this tactic.
Additional Commissioner (AC) of Customs, Harsh Vardhan Umre told The New Indian Express that persons with back problems wearing waist belts were generally not asked to remove them to place it on the trays sent through the baggage scanner. “However, gold smugglers are exploiting this humanitarianism on our part to smuggle gold through such ‘carriers’,” he said. “It has now become a major challenge for security officials to get the right balance between adopting a sympathetic approach towards someone appearing to be ailing physically and subjecting the individual to rigorous checks,” he added.
Gold was powdered and mixed profusely with other chemicals and mud to avoid being detected. “When the individual carrying such gold in the waist belt passes through the metal detector, a tiny beep is heard which is similar to the sound that emanates when someone wearing a watch passes through. No suspicion is aroused,” the official added.
In the five such ‘carriers’ caught during the last six months, profiling and suspicion helped the custom officials, the AC added. Nearly 5 kg gold was recovered from the waist belts with the value crossing 1.2 crore, reveal statistics. Four of them were transporting gold from Dubai while one was doing it from Qatar. Three Indians and two Middle-East nationals were involved.
ALMOST DUPED
Narrating a specific instance of an elderly woman almost duping the customs officials, Umre said that a wheelchair-bound Sri Lankan woman was allowed to bypass the walk-through metal detector as the 74-year-old explained she could not walk. “The hand-held detector was used twice on her when she was seated and nothing was detected. However, when one of our lady customs official was socialising with her, the lady started getting very jittery. Suspecting something fishy, the officer took her inside to check. We found 193 grams of gold in her hair bun.”
Gold biscuits worth K25 lakh seized
Customs officials on Thursday seized 7 Gold biscuits worth `25.15 lakh from a passenger who had arrived from Bahrain. He had concealed the biscuits, weighing 116.64 grams, in two specially created inner cavities in his underwear. The passenger, Shamsuddin, a resident of Bengaluru, had arrived by Air Arabia flight GF280. "The biscuits were wrapped in an insulating tape," the release added.