Domestic passengers made use of to evade customs officials in Vizag
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Visakhapatnam: Customs sleuths at Vizag Airport stumbled upon the various modus operandi of gold smugglers, who travel as domestic passengers in Air India’s Dubai-Vizag (Via Hyderabad) international flight with domestic stoppage to smuggle the glitters. The customs officials also find that some smugglers had swallowed the gold pieces to evade the customs sleuths.
Principal commissioner of customs C. Rajendiran said here on Wednesday that in 2013-14 the gold seized by the customs officials at the Vizag Airport was 6.67 kgs valued at Rs 2.01 crore, in 2014-15 the seizure was 7.62 kgs valued at Rs 2.04 crore and in 2015 so far the seized gold is 11.06 kgs valued at Rs 3.06 crore.
Mr Rajendiran said the prime modus operandi is concealing the yellow mental in the form of bars (biscuits) in the body and trying to evade the custom officials. Most of the gold is making way from Dubai through the Air India flight (AI 952) and Hyderabad transit point was the most vulnerable area in the gold smuggling racket.
The smugglers bring the gold from Dubai and it exchanges hand in the mid-air between Hyderabad and Vizag with the domestic passengers. The domestic passengers can escape from the terminal with nominal scanning.
Hence, the smugglers are exchanging the metal with domestic passengers. Though Vizag Airport has been operating three international flights (Dubai-Vizag), (Singapore-Vizag) and also (Kaulalumpur-Vizag), most of the gold smugglers are arriving Vizag in Dubai-Vizag flight only. “We have decided to strengthen scanning of domestic passengers depending on the suspicion and profile of passengers to curb the illegal smuggling of gold. Most of the smugglers belong to either Hyderabad or Kerala,” he added.
So far customs sleuths arrested 17 persons in connection with yellow metal smuggling from 2013 and a total of '3.75 crore customs duty collected. Answering a question, Mr Rajendiran said that customs is ready for cargo movement from the airport and he dismissed that customs is not responsible for the delay of the cargo and they need a dog squad for detecting narcotics.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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