BENGALURU: A total of 3.45 kg of gold valued at Rs 1.14 crore was seized from five passengers entering the Kempegowda International Airport in the last three days. Of them, four seizures were made on Thursday (May 16) alone.
The biggest seizure of 2.25 kg gold was made in the early hours of Thursday from a passenger returning to the city from Bangkok by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). The passenger Arif Hussain on ThaiAsia flight was intercepted and his hand baggage checked.
The Customs Department made three gold seizures on the same day weighing 1.2 kg and valued at ` 39.6 lakh. Two seizures were made from two different Sri Lankan women on a flight coming from Colombo. On of them, a 75-year-old passenger had 98.9 g of gold with her. “One gold nugget wrapped in black insulation tape in pellet form was found in her rectum, the same passenger was carrying one pair of gold ear studs,” said an official release. A 44-year-old woman had used the same tactic to conceal gold but she carried it in her undergarments, the release said.
She was also wearing a gold bracelet and a pair of ear studs. On a different flight from Colombo to Bengaluru, a male Indian passenger was caught carrying 402 g of gold concealed in the form of paste in his undergarments. In a different seizure by the Customs on May 14, a woman passenger was found carrying a gold chain coated with a silver colour from a flight heading to the city from Muscat.