A housekeeping staff and a parking attendant at the Mangalore international airport were arrested on the charge of being involved in illegal transportation of gold on Tuesday night.
According to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), a passenger arrived on an Air India Express Flight on Tuesday and is said to have dropped some pieces of gold inside a toilet pipe near the Immigration counter.
A few minutes after the commuter left, Ganesh (23), working for an agency assigned with housekeeping at the airport, went inside the toilet to retrieve the gold from the drain.
DRI sleuths, who had been tipped off, rushed to the toilet and found Ganesh holding a gold bar and two gold pellets, all weighing 1.23 kg, in his hands. When questioned, Ganesh revealed that he was to hand over the gold pieces to Naushad Hasan Bihari (31), who was waiting in the parking lot of the airport. The DRI sleuths arrested Naushad Hasan Bihari too.
The DRI said that Ganesh, a resident of Bajpe, and Naushad Hasan Bihari, a resident of B.C. Road, could be earning cuts from a suspected gold smuggling racket.
The DRI officials said that they were investigating the accused persons’ alleged links with smugglers operating between Dubai and Kozhikode in Kerala. The arrested persons were produced before a judge who remanded them in judicial custody, they said.
