The Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of customs captured two passengers arriving from Dubai on Saturday, 21 May, with 5kg gold worth Rs 2.4 crore.
AIU officials further stated that they had gotten information from intelligence suggesting that two travellers on Indigo flight 6E 5396 from Kozhikode to Mumbai were having smuggled gold.
The AIM, along with a team of four other officers, immediately rushed to Terminal-1 to stop the passengers from fleeing and search the aircraft.
The passengers carrying gold were identified as Vijendra alias Satyam and Navneet alias Sumit from Haryana and were detained. After a lengthy interrogation, both the accused handed over four U-shaped 24Kt Gold bars that they had smuggled.
Officials stated that both of them have been booked under the customs act as well as detained in judicial custody.
The passengers had hidden the gold bars in fabric belts which were further fixed around the pipes under the passenger’s seats in Abu Dhabi in the aircraft’s Abu Dhabi-Cochin leg, which took the Cochin-Mumbai route later, and then the Mumbai-Kozhikode route.
The accused stated that they had smuggled a total of 18kg gold worth Rs 9 crore in the past on 26 occasions. They also said that Arman, Ahmed and Syyed were captured last month by the DRI and are the main leaders of the racket.
Recently, there have been several cases of gold smuggling from Dubai only. Dubai has recorded the highest cases involving gold being smuggled from the city to various parts of the world.
This is because gold prices in Dubai are significantly lower than in the rest of the world, which is why people are not allowed to take large amounts of gold out of the city of Dubai. Custom officials take a particular check on passengers travelling from Dubai to any part of the world.