BENGALURU: Air Intelligence Unit of the Airport Customs on Saturday seized 686 grams of gold valued at Rs 31 lakh was recovered in two separate incidents over the weekend.
While a gold bar was found lying abandoned inside a Dubai-Bengaluru flight on Sunday afternoon, two passengers were caught redhanded for concealing gold in their clothes.
A senior customs official informed that this is for the second time this week, gold was left unclaimed inside a flight.
The gold bar was found during a routine rummaging of an IndiGo flight 6E 096 which reached Kempegowda International airport at 12.04 pm. “A gold cut bar was wrapped inside a black plastic and found abandoned inside the flight. It weighed 495.98 grams and its total value comes to Rs 22,97,875,” the official said.
On February 17, gold bars weighing 233 grams were found inside an abandoned football toy inside the same flight.
On Saturday, two flyers were caught in an attempt to smuggle gold in paste form, cleverly stitched and sealed inside the waist area of the pair of jeans they were wearing. They landed at KIA at 12.30 pm by the Fly Dubai flight FZ 4007. “It is highly probable that they were operating as a gang. Both had left from Anna International Airport in Chennai to Dubai on February 19. By profiling and frisking, both passengers were caught,” the official said.
Both are natives of Tamil Nadu, one from Thanjavur and another from Tiruchirapalli Rural, he added. The gold extracted from the paste carried by one passenger was 95.29 grams (value Rs 4,43,670) while 94.27 grams (value Rs 4,38,921) was obtained from the other passenger.
A spate of incidents of smuggling of gold and cigarettes from Dubai have been reported in the last month. The previous huge seizure was on February 11 when a passenger was caught trying to smuggle in 1.3 kg of gold (worth over Rs 62 lakh) by hiding them as tiny capsules inside his rectum and the pair of socks he was wearing along with four drones in his check-in baggage.