NEW DELHI: Customs officers detained a Manipur man who attempted to smuggle gold into India by hiding it in his rectum at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport in New Delhi.
According to reports, the 24-year-old accused was apprehended on Friday after arriving from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
During personal and baggage checks, officers recovered 3 oval-shaped capsules containing yellow chemical paste suspected to be gold, weighing 1,063 grams (including concealing material) concealed in rectum cavity. After extraction, this resulted in the recovery of 951 grams of an uneven-shaped gold bar with a tariff value of 70,37,552," the customs department said in a post on X.
It was also discovered that his luggage contained two 23-gram gold biscuits worth Rs 1.7 lakh.
The passenger was taken into custody and the 974 gram of yellow gold, worth Rs 72.07 lakh, was confiscated.
Meanwhile, earlier in October, officials recovered approximately Rs. 44 lakhs worth of gold at Imphal Airport in Manipur, leading to the arrest of two accused gold smugglers.
The accused were arrested as an outcome of a joint operation by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the Customs Division Imphal's Anti-Smuggling Unit.
The teams targeted two people attempting to board the Indigo flight to Guwahati based on reliable information.
Two gold chains totaling 623.52 grams were discovered hidden in the suspect's handbag by CISF officers conducting standard security checks. The gold chains, estimated to be worth Rs. 44 lakhs, were found by X-ray scanners.
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