Two held with 2.2 kg gold at CIAL

KOCHI: The customs officials at the  Kochi  international airport  arrested two persons belonging to Maharashtra on charges of attempting to smuggle 2.25 kg of gold estimated to be worth Rs 58 lakh on Wednesday. The arrested were  identified as Omprakash Wadhwa and Udhay Dhimrao Patel, both aged 45. The two landed in Kochi by an Air India flight from Kozhikode operating in the Bahrain-Doha-Kozhikode-Kochi sector.

The officials said that Omprakash was the first to be nabbed based on suspicion about him carrying the yellow metal.  On detailed examination,  the sleuths recovered around 1049.74 gm of gold worth around Rs 27.39 lakh concealed in his rectum. The second person, who also came by the same flight, was nabbed from a hotel close to the airport based on the information provided by Omprakash. A search in his room  resulted in the recovery of six gold pieces of 1188.64 gm worth around Rs 30.86 lakh.

The two told the customs that they collected the gold from the flight from another person travelling as an international passenger. The search for the person was  on, officials said. They have now introduced a system of placing suspected passengers arriving from ‘sensitive locations’ such as Dubai and Sri Lanka under a special surveillance system. Domestic passengers using the international flights are also subjected to special surveillance in case of suspicion. In most cases special surveillance system is imposed based on intelligence inputs, officials said.