Bhubaneswar: Biju Patnaik International Airport seems to have become the target of gold smugglers with three such cases being detected since the first international flight started operating on April 26 last year.
The most recent case was detected on Monday when Air Intelligence Unit of Customs recovered gold bars weighing 607.16 grams from a passenger hailing from Thane in Maharashtra.
Airport officials said the gold smugglers had been targeting the airports, which were new to start international flights.
"Most of the time, the carriers take a chance in the hope of sneaking through the security checking at such airports, but they are caught. They should understand that customs officials remain alert in airports starting international operations," said an official.
In November, the unit had recovered gold bars weighing 661.5 grams from a passenger at the city airport. The gold bars were concealed in specially designed screwdrivers. Similarly in May last year, the directorate of revenue intelligence had recovered gold weighing more than 1kg from two passengers. The market value of the gold was more than Rs 30 lakh and both the passengers had concealed the metal in their rectum.
Sources said most of the gold was smuggled from Bangkok and well-organised rackets targeted carriers promising them hefty money. "Several methods are being adopted to conceal the metal, including concealing those in the body. Sometimes the metal is also smuggled through shoes and other luggage," said an airport official.
Airport director S.C. Hota urged the passengers not to get trapped. "The security at the airport is of high standards and the custom officials have their own intelligence to nab such passengers. If the passengers are indeed interested in bringing gold, they must produce duty free receipt," said Hota.
Though the Bhubaneswar airport got international tag on October 31, 2010, the first direct international flight of AirAsia to Kuala Lumpur was launched in April last year. Similarly, Air India had in December last started international flight service to Bangkok from Bhubaneswar.
