Mangaluru: A total of four passengers have been held by the sleuths of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on October 13, at Mangaluru International Airport, while trying to smuggle 16 gold bars.
Acting on credible intelligence that some International passengers arriving by Air India Flight No. AI-814 from Dubai to Mangalore at around would attempt to smuggle gold into the country, the officers of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Regional Unit, Mangalore, carried out thorough checking of the passengers on 13.10.2017 at the Mangalore International Airport and identified the four.
The DRI officials noticed that they were wearing heavy shoes, which they were made to remove and thereupon it was found that they had pasted gold bars under their soles with adhesive tapes and over it had worn thick socks in a regular fashion.
The said gold bars recovered from all four passengers weighed 1936.08 grams in total and were found to be of 24 Karat purity and their current market value was placed at around 57.5 lakhs. The contraband gold was later seized by the officers of DRI under the provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.
On interrogation the passengers admitted that they are regular in smuggling and as revealed from their passports they have been frequently flying from Dubai to India. They also revealed that this modus operandi of pasting gold biscuits under their sole was conceived for smuggling gold into the country as they knew that this method of concealment will largely go undetected by the normal Customs Check at airports.
Further investigation in the case is in progress.
