Pune: Smugglers are frequently tweaking strategies to sneak into the country with gold, leaving Customs authorities here a baffled lot.
Monday’s arrest of a woman with gold in a semi-solid jelly-like form was one such instance. The gold was first powdered. It was then mixed with powder of iron and potassium. A solvent was added to the mixture to give it a semi-solid jelly-like form. This was packed in three plastic pouches and the woman, who reached Pune from Dubai, had concealed them on her body
Customs officials said though the smugglers’ modus operandi was being changed every now and then, they were alert and equipped to avert the attempts.
“March alone saw 10 gold hauls. The amount of gold seized was not much, though. We found people using a variety of items and adopting newer methods to slip through the security cover with gold in small and tiny quantities,” an official told TOI.
“There were days in March when we were seizing gold almost everyday. The earlier ways of bringing in gold is still there. But the smugglers are, at the same time, trying new methods. For instance, if gold is kept in a box of a chocolate spread or wax, it gets difficult to detect such attempts because that the gold pieces are very small. There was an instance of gold found in the shape of small capsules and concealed in a chocolate spread container,” the official said.
Customs officials check the images of each item carried by the fliers in their luggage. Suspicion rises when the images are deep coloured. “The recent rise in attempts to smuggle gold is a concern. The increasing gold rates (per 10 gram) can be one of the factors prompting some people to hoard gold,” another Customs official said. At present, 10gm of gold costs around Rs 30,600.
10/04/18 Joy Sengupta/Times of India
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Monday’s arrest of a woman with gold in a semi-solid jelly-like form was one such instance. The gold was first powdered. It was then mixed with powder of iron and potassium. A solvent was added to the mixture to give it a semi-solid jelly-like form. This was packed in three plastic pouches and the woman, who reached Pune from Dubai, had concealed them on her body
Customs officials said though the smugglers’ modus operandi was being changed every now and then, they were alert and equipped to avert the attempts.
“March alone saw 10 gold hauls. The amount of gold seized was not much, though. We found people using a variety of items and adopting newer methods to slip through the security cover with gold in small and tiny quantities,” an official told TOI.
“There were days in March when we were seizing gold almost everyday. The earlier ways of bringing in gold is still there. But the smugglers are, at the same time, trying new methods. For instance, if gold is kept in a box of a chocolate spread or wax, it gets difficult to detect such attempts because that the gold pieces are very small. There was an instance of gold found in the shape of small capsules and concealed in a chocolate spread container,” the official said.
Customs officials check the images of each item carried by the fliers in their luggage. Suspicion rises when the images are deep coloured. “The recent rise in attempts to smuggle gold is a concern. The increasing gold rates (per 10 gram) can be one of the factors prompting some people to hoard gold,” another Customs official said. At present, 10gm of gold costs around Rs 30,600.
10/04/18 Joy Sengupta/Times of India
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