Unclaimed gold worth Rs 23 lakh discovered in flight toilet

MUMBAI (Scrap Monster): The customs officials at the Goa International Airport, Dabolim seized gold weighing one kilogram that was left abandoned in a flight lavatory.

The gold was discovered from Air India Flight No 994 that had arrived at the airport from Dubai. The Customs officials and Airline security staff found the gold during their routine check of the flight ahead of its onward journey to Bengaluru.

According to Sekhar Jain, Assistant Commissioner, Goa Commisionerate of Customs, the gold was found wrapped in black adhesive tape and attached to the wall behind the toilet paper dispenser. There were 10 gold bars, each weighing 100 grams. The value of seized gold will come to approximately Rs 23 lakh, as per existing market rate. The passengers and the airline staff were questioned, but nobody made claims on the seized gold. Customs has initiated an investigation to trace out the culprits behind the gold smuggling act, Sekhar Jain added.

Sources indicate that several gold smuggling acts have been foiled by Customs authorities at the airport. The officials had seized nearly 12 kilograms of smuggled gold from passengers during November last year. Earlier in June this year, over 9 kilograms of gold worth Rs 2.65 crore was nabbed from a female passenger. Also, investigations into some of these incidents had revealed involvement of airline staff.

Meantime, Indian Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, in a written reply, noted that the government has taken several initiatives to check gold smuggling including thorough check of aircrafts and stricter scanning of passenger baggage. According to him, majority of airports in the country are already equipped with sophisticated metal detectors, state-of-the-art x-ray baggage machines and hand-held metal detectors.

Despite various control mechanisms in place, gold smuggling has only increased in the country. As per Customs records, 169 gold seizures were reported at Indian airports during 2014-’15. Smuggled gold worth nearly Rs 275 crore was seized during this period.