Friday, September 12, 2014

Gold smuggling gets murkier

Gold smugglers continue to use ingenious methods to smuggle the precious yellow metal into the country. In the last 10 days, customs and directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI) sleuths have nabbed two smugglers, who revealed how they had exploited DGCA's decision to allow Air India to operate their international flights as domestic carriers with same flight number in the country.

On September 2, customs sleuths nabbed Rosaiah, a businessman from Vijayawada, who disembarked from Air India flight (AI 952) from Dubai.

The flight took off from Dubai and reached Visakhapatnam after a stoppage at Hyderabad. Domestic passengers can board the flight on the Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam route. Rosaiah boarded the flight at the RGI Airport as a domestic passenger and, the customs sleuths noticed that he was wearing multiple armlets weighing 1.5 kg. When questioned by officials, Rosaiah claimed it was his personal jewellery. They then asked him why he had not declared such a huge quantity while boarding the flight at Hyderabad.
"Finally, Rosaiah gave in when we told him that the armlets he was wearing were made of raw gold. Rosaiah confessed that he got the armlets from his brother, who was coming from Dubai on the same flight during the journey between Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam," a customs official said.
12/09/14 Mahesh Buddi/Times of India
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