BENGALURU: The Airport Customs officials have uncovered five instances of gold smuggling by passengers coming to the Kempegowda International Airport from Dubai in the last nine days. A total of 1.9 kg of gold and crude gold, totally valued at nearly Rs 1 crore in the market, have been recovered from their possession. The incidents occurred between December 9 and 17 and a total of 1,924.87 gm of gold was seized under the Customs Act and the passengers taken into custody, sources said. All of them were held after profiling as well as physical scanning, they said.
A senior Customs official said that the innovative methods of concealment noticed this time were placing the gold in the lower portion of cream and balm bottles. “When we removed ll the cream, we found the gold at the bottom. These were brought by a passenger on an Emirates flight (EK 564) on December 17,” the official said.
Another novel method was smuggling gold hidden beneath the touchscreen panel of mobile phones. There were four boxes of such panels, he said. Regular methods like concealment inside the rectum, nail clippers, metal parts in women’s handbags were also witnessed, another official said. “Nearly 500 gm was concealed in paste form in the rectum by two passengers, both on the same Air India Express flight (IX 1246), who were caught on December 11,” he added.The biggest seizure of 900.36 gm was made from a passenger on an Indigo flight (6E 096) on December 9, he said.