Last Sunday, based on inputs from the Air Intelligence wing of the Customs, officials detained a Sri Lankan national at the Green Channel and recovered 18 gold biscuits from him.
The biscuits that weighed about 347 gm with a market value of about ₹10.56 lakh were hidden by the rectum and stomach of the passenger, Abdul Razak Mohammed Ziyard.
This was the second case that the Customs officials had detected in the last few months at Visakhapatnam airport, ever since the Vizag-Colombo operation was started by SriLankan Airlines.
Earlier, three women passengers of Sri Lankan origin, who arrived from Colombo, were intercepted and gold jewellery weighing about 740 gm was confiscated from them.
This has put the Customs officials on an alert, as they feel that Sri Lanka could be the new route for the smugglers to smuggle gold into the country. Earlier, the focus was on Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore, as that had been the major route for gold smugglers. But with detection two cases from Sri Lanka within a period of three months is a cause of worry, said a senior Customs officer. The SriLankan Airlines began its Vizag-Colombo services this year and the traffic is also said to be good. Be it Sri Lanka, Dubai, Malaysia or Singapore, gold is cheaper than in India.
India is the biggest buyer of gold in the world. There is variation of rate by 10 to 15 % between these countries and India. The average profit made per kg on smuggled gold is about ₹2.5 lakh.
For the Customs officials, to track a smuggler is a very difficult task. “Unless we have some prior intelligence inputs, it is not an easy task to stop a foreign national who declares to proceed through the green channel, as it might snowball into a diplomatic crisis. It is a split second decision coordinated with concrete intel inputs,”said the officer.
Sources say that Visakhapatnam is an upcoming international airport with flights to Malaysia, Dubai, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Since the airport is not under much focus, smugglers could be using this as the new landing point.
The earlier major seizure was in June 2015, when Customs and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence officials seized about 63 kg of gold from 57 passengers. The gold was then smuggled from Malaysia, and the smugglers melted and shaped up the gold in the form of components of household electronic goods. In the same year 4.2 kg gold valued at ₹1.14 crore seized from seven passengers from Dubai.
