Customs superintendent held for stealing gold from airport

NEWDELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested a superintendent of the customs department from Sonepat in connection with theft of gold from the vaults of the department at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.

The official has been identified as Sanjeev Kumar, a supritendent in Central excise’s Kundli division in Sonepat commissionerate (Haryana). Agency officials said Kumar was posted as custodian at the godown of customs at IGI Airport during 2002-03 and in 2004 when the gold went missing.

The agency had earlier filed FIRs in a number of cases pertaining to the alleged pilferage of over 100 kilograms of gold.

CBI sources said Sanjiv Kumar, the superintendent in the customs department at Sonepat in Haryana, was arrested recently in connection with the case

An FIR was registered against unknown officials on the basis of a complaint by the office of the commissioner of customs (vigilance).

According to the FIR, a committee was set up to probe the pilferage of gold items, which the customs department routinely seizes during checks of passengers travelling with unaccounted expensive gold.

The commissioner’s office conducted its own inquiry between January 9 and February 21 and found that 23 cases of gold have gone missing.The committee conducted a probe to compare the quantity of gold that was seized by the department with the quantity of that currently in storage. The details were compared with those logged in the master book at the time of the seizure of gold.

In most cases, the gold in the form of bars was stored at the warehouse. However, the committee found that the bars were either missing or replaced with pieces of iron or yellowish material.

It was found that close to 16,000 grammes of gold stored in its godown was found to be either missing or replaced with nonprecious metal. In a press statement, CBI stated that the amount of gold which was found to be missing was over 100 kilograms.