MALAPPURAM: The customs’ air intelligence unit at Kozhikode airport has launched a detailed investigation into the incident in which 1.226kg of gold worth Rs 63.56 lakh was seized from a cabin crew member of an Air India Express flight. It expects that the inquiry would reveal the involvement of more people in smuggling in the state and abroad. The unit arrested Navneet Singh, a native of Delhi, who was a cabin crew member of IX 356 that arrived at Kozhikode airport last Wednesday. A senior customs official said Navneet had smuggled gold at least seven times through the airport.
“He might have smuggled more than 7 kg of gold through the airport. He is now under remand for 14 days,” the official said. Navneet’s modus operandi was different. “Usually, gold carriers from the Gulf region themselves try to bring the consignment outside the airport. In his case, the carrier would leave the gold in the airplane and Navneet would bring it outside and hand it over to the smugglers. When we caught him, he had hidden the gold compound ins ide hi s shoes,” he added.
On the day of the seizure, Air India and some other sources informed the customs that the flight captain might be carrying illegal gold with him. To avoid an awkward situation of frisking the captain alone, the customs decided to frisk the entire cabin crew of the flight. “We could not find anything from the captain. But cabin crew member Navneet revealed that he had hidden gold in his shoes before we started frisking him. During detailed interrogation based on the intelligence report with us, he confessed that he had smuggled gold seven times through the airport. He received Rs 1 lakh each time.
However, he was not aware of the quantity of gold he had handed over to the smugglers,” the official said. Before being ar rested, Navneet managed to delete the call and chat history from his mobile phones. “He used two mobile phones and one of them was used to contact the gold smugglers. The call history on the phones would help us nab more people involved in gold smuggling.
He confessed to being a part of seven gold smuggling incidents only after we told him about the secret information we had received. So, if we quiz him with the data retrieved from his phones, he might reveal more about the smuggling gangs,” the official said.The customs sleuths in Kozhikode will hand over the case to their headquarters in Kochi if the phone data lead them to big fishes in the illegal business.