Mumbai Airport Customs seize 61 kg gold worth Rs 32 crore in a day. FM Niramala Sitharaman lauds the alertness

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today appreciated the alertness of Customs department at Mumbai Airport. The Mumbai Airport Customs officials seized 61 kg gold valued at Rs 32 crore and arrested seven passengers in two different cases recently.

"Appreciate @mumbaicus3 for your alertness. Your timely action has borne a stunning outcome. Well done," Nirmala Sitharaman congratulated the department in a tweet.



As per reports, the record seizures on Friday was the highest in a single day reported in the history of Mumbai Airport Customs. Seven people including five men and two female passengers have been arrested related to these two cases.

In the first case, customs department seized 53 kg of gold valued at Rs 28.17 crore from four passengers of Indian nationality. The passenger landed at Mumbai airport in a flight from Tanzania. They were smuggling gold in the form of one Kg bars ingeniously concealed in specially designed waist belts with multiple pockets.

The specially designed belts with UAE-made gold bars concealed inside were reportedly handed over to the passengers by a person of Sudanese nationality at Doha airport during the transit time.

All four passengers have been arrested and remanded to 14 days of judicial custody by the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate.

In another case, based on the intelligence, officers of Mumbai Airport Customs seized 8 Kg gold valued at Rs 3.88 crore from three passengers (one male and two females) arriving from Dubai by Vistara Flight. Gold dust in wax form was found ingeniously concealed in the waistline of the jeans pants worn by the passengers.

The three passengers included one lady passenger in her late sixties who were in a wheelchair. All three passengers have been arrested and remanded to judicial custody.

Further investigation into the matter is going on.

At Mumbai Airport, based on the continuous monitoring of suspicious flights and building on the data-based analysis from the earlier high-quantum gold and foreign currency seizures, a systematic profiling of suspect passengers was undertaken on sensitive flights from certain places in Africa and the Middle East, Customs department said in a statement.

In the recent case of the Foreign Currency seizure of 4.08 crores, the pattern and mode of operation noticed along with profiling of foreign national passengers and extrapolating the patterns led to success in this case.

(Inputs from ANI)