Gold smuggling on the rise: Customs

MID-DAY (JULY 2001)

By Skimmy Gupta

With 233 gold biscuits valued at Rs 1.28 crore seized in eight different cases at Sahar Airport over the past two and a half months, Custom officials says that gold smuggling is on the rise again.

The gold in these cases was concealed in toy scooters, mixers, curtain rods, emergency lights, battery cells, ladies undergarments, emergency lights. The latest seizure was on July 11.

Hamid Kamal (35) was arrested at the airport at 8.30 am on July 11 while trying to smuggle in 3.449 kg of gold valued at Rs 15 lakh. Hamid, originally hailing from Mallpuram district of Kerala, arrived from a Middle East country. Custom officials spotted him when he avoided the gold counter. On frisking his luggage, a tape recorder was found. The battery cells inside concealed 10 gold biscuits of 10 tolas each. The transformer of the stereo contained 23 gold biscuits of 100 grams each.

Sunil Kumar Katiyar, public relations officer of Custom Uniform Arrival batch C1, said that the gold was valued at Rs 13,68,982 in the international market and Rs 15,03,764 in the Indian market.

"The recent spurt in gold smuggling is due to two reasons: there was an auction of 100 tonnes of gold in the United Kingdom recently and the underworld seems to have bought the bulk of it to smuggle into India. Secondly, the gold demand has increased up to 600 metric tonnes in India.

Profit margins are huge lately due to rate differences between India and other countries," he said.

Pankaja Ashish, deputy commissioner, Module 1, Sahar Airport, said, "Yes, gold smuggling is rising. But we are prepared to tackle this problem. We will soon be issuing passenger facilitation booklets so nobody who s caught can claim ignorance of the law."