Bengaluru: The customs officials have foiled three attempts of gold smuggling into the city by arresting three people, including a woman, in the first week of August at the Kempegowda International Airport.
The officials have recovered gold brought by three different people in the form of biscuits, rods, and wires in their baggage which was worth Rs 45 lakh. The arrested were Ashfaque Ahmed Kakde (50), Farhana Begum (35) and Inshaf Mohammed (24), a Sri Lankan national.
The officials caught Kakde on August 4 when they found that he had concealed gold in the juicer which he had brought from Dubai. Kakde, a native of Bhatkal and who runs a consumer goods business in Dubai, had replaced the rods of the supporting stand in a juicer with rods made of gold.
On August 3, the officials caught Farhana Begum Syed (35), a single mother who is a resident of Bengaluru, for smuggling four gold biscuits of 100 grams each, which she had concealed in her undergarments. She had been to Bangkok in search of a job and was instead used as a conduit to smuggle gold by her friend in Bangkok. Farhana is said to have told her interrogators that she was offered Rs 10,000 to deliver the consignment to a person outside the airport.
In another incident on August 1, a 24-year-old Sri Lankan national Inshaf Mohammed was caught while smuggling gold. The officials had recovered from him three gold wires weighing 511 grams concealed in the lining of his suitcase.
Inshaf, according to officials, was ready-made garment dealer in Sri Lanka and used to visit Bengaluru to purchase good quite often. He told the officials that one of his friends in Sri Lanka had given him the suitcase and asked him to hand it over to a person outside the airport. He had also received Rs 10,000 as commission.
The officials are also examining if the trio was part of an international gang of smugglers.
