India seizes gold in CPU from Gulf expat

Yet another Indian national was arrested upon arrival from the Gulf at an airport in India for trying to smuggle gold, even as officials in India have raised alarm bells.

Smuggled gold worth more than Dh3 million was seized from various airports across the country in the past three days.

In the latest incident, an Indian was arrested at Thiruvananthapuram airport on Sunday morning (October 26) carrying 3.5kg of gold hidden inside a desktop CPU.

This was the second such arrest at the airport within a week. According to customs officials, this year alone about 56kg of smuggled gold has been seized from travellers, mainly from the Gulf.

Gold smuggling has been on the rise in India during recent months. Indian officials have directed all customs staff operating at both airports and sea ports to be vigilant against gold smuggling. A total of 1,780 cases of smuggling gold valued at around Dh281.7 million have been registered across the country by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and customs department between April and August 2014.

On Friday, customs officials at Mumbai arrested two women, both travelling with infants, hiding gold worth about Dh600,000. According to officials at the airport, five separate incidents of gold smuggling into the airport led to seizures worth almost Dh2.09 million.

According to a media report, one of the women was not only carrying an infant but was also six months pregnant. Both women were flying by Jet Airways.

Just a day earlier, customs officials at Pune airport had arrested two people, including an official from the airport for smuggling gold. The two had smuggled 2.1kg of gold from the Gulf.

One of the arrested has been identified as Basheer Shaikh working at the housekeeping section of the Airport Authority of India, a government department that manages the operations at all commercial airports in India.

Officials are investigating if Basheer has been involved in previous incidents of smuggling.

One of the arrested, Mohsin Mobin Shaikh, had arrived by an Air India Express flight and was found planning to take the smuggled gold out of the airport with Basheer’s help.
 

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