BENGALURU: Bengaluru Airport Customs seized over 2kg gold valued at over Rs 1.25 crore, from six international passengers in the past two days.
The biggest seizure among them was recorded on Friday when a passenger arrived from Muscat on an Oman Air flight (WY281) with 1113.07 grams of gold. “The gold was concealed in paste form in his waist belt pouch placed inside his hand baggage. It is valued at Rs 68.18 lakh,” said a Customs official. He is a native of Kozhikode.
Another 966 grams of gold were seized on Thursday from three male flyers from Bangkok, and two women flying in from Colombo.
The official said, “Three separate passengers on board Indigo flight 6E 1056 from Bangkok were caught, and each of them was wearing two crude gold chains around their necks, totally weighing 300 grams, and valued at Rs 18,13,800.” Crude gold is not permitted inside India.
The woman passengers from Colombo arrived by Indigo 6E 1168 and had concealed the yellow metal by different methods. “One of them had concealed the gold in the form of 20 cut pieces, each weighing one gram. They were concealed between the beads of her white colored necklace while some were stitched inside her innerwear. It was valued at Rs 1,20,920.”
The other woman had concealed four cut pieces of crude gold chain totally worth 46 grams and valued at Rs 2,78, 116 by stitching them in her pair of socks and in the lower half of her pants.