BENGALURU: Officials at the Bangalore Airport Customs on Sunday made a huge seizure of gold at the Kempegowda International Airport in two different hauls, seizing a total of 10.36 kg gold worth Rs 3.40 crore. In the first case, which took place on Sunday night, officials seized 92 gold biscuits — weighing 100 g each — totally weighing 9.2 kg valued at Rs 3.02 crore.
These gold biscuits had arrived by flight No. SQ502 from Singapore and were found concealed inside music speakers brought in the check-in baggage to avoid detection by customs authorities, a release issued on Monday said.The check-in baggage was scanned by the customs officer at the primary scanning, and on suspicion, marked the said bag for further verification. The bag was put on the conveyor belt in the last for identification of owner of the suitcase. However, none of the passenger picked the bag. As the bag laid unattended, the ground handling staff of the SQ 502 flight, were called and informed about the abandoned bag.
It was found belonging to a woman named Noorulayne, a Singapore national, who had travelled by flight SQ502. It was the secondary scan of the baggage which indicated presence of suspicious metallic objects inside two music speakers. The 92 gold biscuits were found taped inside the speakers using insulation tapes.
This is being considered as one of the biggest single case gold seizure by Bangalore Airport Customs in recent times. In another case, also on Sunday, the airport customs officials seized gold weighing 1. 164 kg valued at Rs 38.35 lakh from five passengers who arrived from Bahrain. The passengers, Mohammed Ali, Abdul Kadir, Nagoor Mevan, Sathik Batcha and Shahul Hameed, were intercepted by customs officials at the airport after scanning of their checked-in baggages. The passengers are residents of Chennai and had arrived from Bahrain.