Biggest gold haul ever in Madurai airport as DRI sleuths seize 31 kg worth Rs 8 crore from 10 passengers

Chennai: Investigators from the directorate of revenue intelligence seized 31.75 kg of gold worth over Rs 8.43 crore from 10 passengers who arrived in Madurai from Dubai and Colombo on Saturday. Three of them were arrested by DRI.

All the passengers are being subjected to detailed interrogation, DRI officials said here.

According to them, the search operations were planned after they had reliable information about a large number of passengers being deployed by smuggling gangs as couriers for bringing in gold hidden in clothes, cell phones, cigarettes, alcohol bags and packed in chocolate wrappers.

By concealing gold in this manner, they had been dodging customs, managing to walk routinely through green channels. The passengers involved in smuggling had used the Mihin Lanka flight from Colombo that was also carrying transit passengers from Singapore and Bangkok and the Spicejet flight from Dubai. No passengers belonging to the smuggling gang had declared that they were carrying dutiable goods.

Apart from seizing gold from passengers, the DRI team also seized gold bars placed in various places inside the aircraft. Since the flight was scheduled to fly on from Madurai to Chennai, the smuggling gang had planned to conceal the gold by employing passengers who travel on the domestic route so that it could be smuggled out without customs checks at domestic airports.