Four passengers returning to the country with a total of 700 gm of gold were nabbed by the Customs Department officials at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru here on Tuesday. The worth of the gold seized on Tuesday alone amounts to Rs 23.19 lakh.
Three women of Tamil origin, who arrived on the Colombo flight of Sri Lankan Airlines, were put behind the bars after initial frisking and on further examination it was found that they had put gold paste covered with plastic sheaths in their rectum.
They were trying to smuggle gold in paste form and later it was found that they were carrying 496 gram of the metal. The women were expecting to pass through the metal detectors as the metal was in the form of a paste but were under the radar during passenger profiling. When they grew fishy, the officials queried them and later a medical examination proved their sneaking suspicion to be right.
In another incident, one flier of Andhra Pradesh origin was caught with 200 gm of gold tied in his body as he reached Bengaluru from Kuwait in an Emirates flight.
Incidents like this have been repeating for some time now.
