“The Mumbai airport customs apprehended 12 kg of gold valued at Rs 5.38 crore from a specially designed belt worn by Sudanese passengers to smuggle on Sunday,” said officials.
A group of Sudanese passengers who arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on a Saturday Emirates flight from Dubai was detained by the air intelligence unit (AIU) of Mumbai Customs, under the direction of deputy commissioner Manudev Jain.
“The Mumbai airport customs apprehended 12 kg of gold valued at Rs 5.38 crore from a specially designed belt worn by a Sudanese passenger on Sunday,” said officials.
According to customs, a group of six passengers on a flight from Dubai were suspected of causing a commotion to aid the accused escape but were overcome. According to the officials, it is a common approach used to divert the attention of customs inspectors while one member of the gang tries to sneak contraband past the red channel.
The seized gold was hidden in a specifically constructed belt worn by a Sudanese passenger.
As per the report, a total of 12 passengers were involved in the gold smuggling plot. “Six individuals have been detained and six more are being deported,” an officer said.
“The accused gathered and attempted to clear the smuggled gold by creating chaos to distract the AIU officers. However, the officers, in a well-organized operation, recovered 12 gold bars weighing one kg each that were concealed in a specially-designed belt worn by one of the Sudanese passengers,” an official said.
The gold was concealed in a red-colored belt worn by one of the passengers and specially designed to carry out the crime. When customs officers detected anything illicit, other passengers in the group reportedly attempted to cause a scene at the airport in the hopes that the individual wearing the gold-laden belt would flee. However, they were all overpowered and subsequently arrested by officials.
According to the source, in addition to the Sudanese who were carrying the gold, five other Sudanese who were unpleasant and confrontational to divert the attention of AIU officers were also detained.
“Six other Sudanese passengers, who added to the commotion by constantly resisting the checking procedure, were deported back to their country of origin with a permanent ban from entering India,” said the official.
Advocate Prabhakar Tripathi, who represented the accused in court, claimed that the gold recovered in the case was discovered in the airport’s arrival hall bathroom. He claimed that six innocents were arrested and detained solely on the suspicion that the Sudanese had arrived at the airport at the same time, although there was nothing to acquire from them.
“The customs department has failed to find the original guilty and cooked up a case to arrest six innocent people. The other six Sudanese were not allowed to enter India and the customs department has deported them,” he argued.
The court remanded the six arrested defendants in judicial custody for 14 days after charging them under the relevant Customs Act sections.
Earlier this month, Mumbai Airport Customs Officers confiscated 1.3 kg of cocaine worth Rs 13 crore. The narcotics bust turned up 87 capsules of cocaine that the alleged Ghana passenger swallowed. In August, a woman passenger at Mumbai Airport recovered 5 crores of cocaine. The woman, identified as a Sierra Leonean, flew on Ethiopian Airlines from Addis Ababa to Mumbai on Friday.
In one of the largest methamphetamine drug busts in the nation’s history, a special cell of Delhi police recently detained two Afghan nationals and seized 312.5kg of methamphetamine and 10kg of high-purity heroin, worth 1200 crores.
Last month, a total of 4,728 kg of ganja, worth ₹15 crores, was also confiscated from Assam. A truck with rubber sheets on the top and ganja sachets tucked underneath was used to smuggle it.
