Gold seizure at int’l airport sees 173pc jump last fiscal

The last seizure by the Customs sleuths for fiscal 2014-15 was from a man travelling from Dubai, who tried to smuggle 1.5 kg gold worth Rs 39 lakh on March 31. The gold seizures resulted in 1,146 cases in 2014-15 and the arrest of 260 smugglers, a 159 per cent jump from the 443 cases registered and 149 arrests made in 2013-14.

Customs officials attributed this surge in the seizure to the rise in duty and other levies on gold. “Although we made a record, it was a tough year for us because there were a lot of insiders involved in smuggling. In the last six months, a lot of insiders were caught, but these rackets are tough to crack because not all of them go through the Customs areas of the airport. We also noticed an increase in gold smuggling after shifting to the new airport. The airport is bigger, spread across four levels with more exit gates, but despite these constraints, we have cracked several cases, much more than other airports,” said Milind Lanjewar, Additional Commissioner of Customs.

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Mumbai Airport Customs officials had set a new record by seizing one tonne of gold in their interceptions at the CSIA on December 13 last year. This was the highest amount of yellow metal seized at any airport in the country in a calendar year.

Recent big cases had been instances of 60 kg seizure by Ahmedabad Customs and 87 kg gold by Kolkata Customs, he said, adding that because of the high seizure rate of the Mumbai airport, smugglers now did not dare to bring in such big consignments here.

Besides gold, even seizures of currency, cigarettes and gutkha have seen a jump from previous years. In 2014-15, as many as 38 cases were registered and currency worth Rs 6.24 crore were seized. Further, there were 176 cases registered for smuggling cigarettes and gutkha worth Rs 2.11 crore at the airport.

One of the last non-gold seizures for this financial year was the recovery of Rs 51 lakh of Indian currency in denomination of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes inside bags of tamarind and kokam, said Customs officials.

In comparison, Customs seized just Rs 1.83 crore of smuggled currency, and  cigarettes and gutkha worth Rs 1.06 crore in 2013-14. In 2012-13, Customs seized Rs 5.26 crore of smuggled currency, cigarettes and gutkha worth Rs 68 lakh.

anjali.lukose@expressindia.com