When a Sri Lankan national arrived at the Tiruchi International Airport a couple of months ago, the Customs officials found his walking style strange. Wearing a Bermuda trouser and T-shirt, the burly Lankan in his mid-forties who came by a Sri Lankan Airlines flight from Colombo was a frequent visitor to Chennai and Tiruchi.
His unusual walking style attracted the attention of the Air Intelligence Unit officials who detained him for questioning. During sustained inquiry, the Lankan finally admitted that he was smuggling gold in the rectum.
Gold in cylindrical forms besides a couple of gold biscuits weighing a little over one kg were found concealed in the rectum. The value of the seized gold was Rs. 28.19 lakh.
Interestingly, this was highest quantum of gold found concealed in the rectum of an air traveller at Tiruchi airport. This was not the first time that Customs officials at the airport had come across such an instance.
Concealment of gold in the rectum had been reported at frequent intervals at the Tiruchi airport from where overseas flights are operated to Colombo, Singapore, Malaysia, and Dubai every day by different foreign carriers.
Customs officials say they had detected 51 such cases from January till now wherein the modus operandi of the gold smugglers was to smuggle the yellow metal in the rectum.
A majority of those caught at Tiruchi airport with gold concealed in the rectum were men who travelled as international passengers in different overseas airlines. A majority of them were Indian nationals.
Officials say the quantum of gold in various forms concealed in the rectum ranged from 50 grams to 1kg. Rectum concealment continues to be a preferred tactic by smugglers in a bid to hoodwink enforcement authorities in addition to other ingenious ways if the cases detected is any indication.
Out of the over 200 gold seizure cases reported at Tiruchi airport till now this year, nearly one-fourth of them were through the rectum concealment mode, say officials. In most instances, carriers caught adopting this modus operandi arrived from Colombo and Singapore.
Such cases were detected through a combination of passenger profiling and using gadgets, says a senior official. Frequent flyers with very short visit at times raise suspicion prompting the officials to inquire them subtly.
Even if the suspect successfully comes out of door frame metal detector without anything suspicious being detected, the person is checked using a hand-held metal detector to check for concealment of gold in the rectum, said the official.
In the recent times, Customs officials caught nine passengers who travelled under domestic category by Air India Express flight from Chennai to Tiruchi and found gold concealed in their rectum. This included a couple.
51 cases of smugglers carrying gold in their rectum detected so far since January
Frequent flyers with very shot visit usually are suspected of smuggling gold
