Four men including Japanese arrested for smuggling gold, forex at New Delhi airport
Big haul: New Delhi customs seize gold, forex worth INR 55 Million. The Japanese, who arrived at the airport from Hong Kong, was caught with 7kg of gold concealed in auto parts.
New Delhi. In two separate incidents of smuggling at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in India, the customs department arrested three Indians and one Japanese for illegally trying to smuggle foreign exchange and yellow metal.
Both the incidents have Hong Kong as a common connection as Japanese had arrived from Hong Kong while three Indians were about to board a plane to Hong Kong.
In the first incident, the customs officials intercepted after his arrival from Hong Kong and recovered four pieces of gold in a cylindrical shape and eight gold bars, which he had stashed in the auto parts he was carrying in his baggage. The gold collectively weighed 7 kg with its market worth of INR 22 million.
The Japanese whose name has not been revealed by the customs authorities, owns an automobile workshop in Japan. The customs officials had confirmed tip-off about this Japanese smuggling some objects into India, the sources in the Indian customs department said.
The gold was concealed discreetly in the brake plates and piston parts as these auto parts were put through the X-Ray scanner machine, the gold was spotted.
It took the custom authorities about an hour to dismantle the auto parts to take the concealed gold bars. The Japanese was arrested by the police after this and the gold was confiscated.
In the second incident, customs officers intercepted three Indian men who were about to board a flight to Bangkok and the following detailed [personal and baggage search of these passengers resulted in recovery of US, Hong Kong, and New Zealand dollars, euros, riyals, UAE dirhams, Bahrain Dinars, Japanese yen, pounds and others equivalent to INR 23 million.
The trio was arrested on the spot by the Indian police and sent to jail.
