M’luru: City Airport Customs seize 1.4 kgs of gold bars worth Rs 36 Lac from Dubai passenger

Bellevision Media Network

Mangaluru, 02 Oct 2015: The customs officers of Mangaluru International Airport seized about 1.4 kilograms of gold bars valued over Rs 36 lac from a passenger who arrived from Dubai on Thursday October 1 morning.

 

On a reasonable suspicion, the officers enquired from a frequently flying passenger as to whether he possessed any dutiable items to be declared to customs. As the passenger could not provide any satisfactory reply and was incoherent while responding to the officers, his baggage was subjected to detailed examination. The examination resulted in detecting one unusually heavy voltage converter. On a thorough examination, the officers detected 3 rectangular silver paint coated metallic bars, which were ingeniously concealed in coil portion of the voltage converter. The gold assessor has confirmed the bars as pure gold of 24 carat.

 

On interrogation, the passenger has deposed that he had intentionally concealed the gold bars to avoid detection by customs and to evade payment of appropriate customs duty. Since the gold bars have been smuggled into India in contravention of the provisions of the Customs Act of 1962 related to Baggage Rules 1998, the gold bars valued over Rs 36 lac were seized. The passenger was arrested and produced before the principal civil judge (senior division) and chief judicial magistrate, Mangaluru, who remanded him to judicial custody for 14 days.  Further investigations are under progress.

 

Mangaluru customs has been taking proactive measures of profiling passengers, identifying passengers making short trips without any ostensible reasons, maintaining database of suspicious passengers, zeroing on such suspicious passengers for detailed examination etc, in order to control smuggling of contraband.