MALAPPURAM: The Karipur police have arrested a 19-year-old woman passenger for attempting to smuggle 1,884g of gold worth Rs 1crore through the Kozhikode airport. Though the passenger —Shahla, a native a Kasaragod — managed to complete the customs inspection, she was nabbed by the police, who were waiting outside the airport based on the tip-off received by district police chief Sujith Das.
According to the police, she tried to fool the officers by concealing the gold compound inside her inner garments. She arrived at the airport from Dubai at 10.20pm on Sunday. “Despite questioning for hours, she refused to admit that she was a gold carrier. The police then frisked her to recover the gold. The gold compound in three packets was concealed inside her inner garments,” said Sujith Das. According to the police, the 19-year-old had intended to make easy money by smuggling the gold.
She made the officials believe that she visited Dubai to attend an interview. The smuggling racket offered her Rs 60,000 for being a part of the attempt, the police said.
“We will hand over a detailed report of the seizure to the customs department soon,” he said. The police have successfully implemented a new model to nab gold smugglers and check gold smuggling attempts through the airport. “We have been implementing the system at the airport since last March. In this short period, we could foil 87 gold smuggling attempts,” Sujith Das added.