Gold smugglers take Lko airport route
LUCKNOW:Recent catches by customs authorities at the Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport, popularly known as Amausi airport, here in October month suggest that the city airport is fast turning out to be the favourite ‘escape’ route for gold smugglers.
Custom officials here said around 6 kilograms of gold worth ₹ 2 crore smuggled from Abu Dhabi and Dubai had been seized in one month.
“This years, there has been highest numbers of seizures from six people, suspected to be carriers of an international gold smuggling racket, in October,” said assistant commissioner of Customs Shashi Shekhar.
“The seizures suggest that gold smugglers are opting for Lucknow airport as the transit route more frequently as compared to other airports. The increase in number of seizures is due to increased alertness of the custom officials while checking passengers landing here from Gulf countries,” he said.
The recent seizure of around 970 grams of gold was from a Siddarthnagar resident Mohd Rasheed, who landed here from an Abu Dhabi flight on Monday. While checking Rasheed’s luggage, the custom officials found the gold concealed in the steel grip of his trolley bag. Rasheed is being further interrogated to know the people behind the racket involved in smuggling gold from Gulf countries through different routes.
Before that, the customs officials had arrested a Bihar resident Bhupendra Yadav, who was carrying around 1.25 kg gold worth ₹40 lakh from Abu Dhabi on October 12. In another catch, a Barabanki resident Abu Bakar was arrested on October 11 for carrying around 2 kg gold worth ₹61 lakh.
The yellow metal was concealed inside a vacuum cleaner.
On October 6, a Delhi resident Gurmeet Singh was arrested at Lucknow for carrying around 1.25 kg gold worth ₹40 lakh. Coming from Abu Dhabi, he had concealed the gold in small metal pieces polished as silver metal.
There were also two small seizures from two persons coming from Dubai on October 9 and October 12.
Sharing the past experience, another custom official said gold smugglers kept on changing the transit route from time to time and the recent seizures hint that Lucknow was now their preferred route.