Amid a nasty series of events, 2 passengers were found smuggling gold of 1.42 kilograms by hiding its paste in their rectum.
The absurd incident took place on Wednesday at the Chennai airport after routine checking revealed that the duo had goods worth Rs. 85 lakhs in total.
The Chennai Air Customs department at the airport immediately arrested the two as they found 1.42 kilograms of gold, priced at Rs. 72.6 lakhs. The rest Rs. 12.4 lakhs were contributed from various other commodities recovered from them, including 11 iPhones, 8 bottles of liquor, 44 packs of cigarettes, and 8 laptops.
According to reports, the passengers were traveling in Flight 6E 8246 from Dubai to reach Chennai Airport. In a bid to prevent the gold from getting seized by the airport authorities, the two hid the gold, which was in the form of a paste, in their rectums. However, their efforts thrashed when the metal was still recovered from them.
Customs officials at the airport also seized various other things from their check-in luggage and arrested both.
As per the released statement of Commissioner of Customs Rajan Chowdhry, gold bits and chains were also recovered from the pant pockets of the passengers who came from Sharjah.
Notably, this isn’t the first time when passengers carrying gold in their rectum were arrested in Chennai. In December 2020, a man was found hiding 2 packets of 200 gms of each gold paste in his rectum, valued at Rs. 8.6 lakhs.
In October’s 2 separate incidences, a Dubai returnee was detained after medical examination showed that he had concealed Rs. 45 lakh worth of gold paste in his rectum while 1.8 kilograms of gold was recovered in another smuggling case.
Another 4.1 kilograms of gold, valued at Rs. 2. 16 crores were found in the rectums of 3 passengers flying from Dubai to Chennai on October 17th. Following a suspicion of gold smuggling, 14 passengers on 2 IndiGo flights were interrogated.
“On questioning, they revealed concealment of 38 bundles of gold paste in their rectums. The contraband was recovered and seized under the Customs Act of 1962,” a Customs statement said.
More recently, the Chennai airport authorities recovered 3.72 kgs of gold from 16 passengers traveling from Sharjah and Dubai. One woman was hiding 600 gms of gold in a chocolate wrapper while the other 15 had concealed it in their rectums. The total worth of the gold was estimated to be Rs. 1.97 crores.
