Bhubaneswar: Smuggling of gold through Biju Patnaik International Airport here continues with two more such cases being detected this week.

More than 6kg of smuggled gold have been seized from passengers from the airport so far.

On Saturday, officers of the customs' air intelligence unit intercepted one passenger hailing from Mohali in Punjab who arrived from Bangkok by an Air India flight and seized gold weighing 243 grams. The seized gold had a market value of Rs 7.91 lakh.

Similarly, the unit on Thursday seized gold bars weighing 355.12 grams from a passenger at the airport. The market value of the gold bars was Rs 11.37 lakh. Custom officials said the passenger hailing from Kozhikode in Kerala had reached the airport from Bangkok on another Air India and concealed the metal in powdered form inside his rectum.

"This is a new trend as the metal was being smuggled in the form of powder. We have to sent it to a laboratory to convert it into metal. Several innovative methods are being adopted to conceal the metal, including concealing the metal in body parts. Sometimes, the metal is also smuggled in shoes and other luggage. But the method of smuggling gold in powdered from is a new trend," said a customs sleuth.

Though the Bhubaneswar airport got international tag on October 31, 2010, the first direct international flight began when AirAsia began operations with a flight to the Malaysian capital if Kuala Lumpur in April last year. Similarly, Air India started its international flight service to Bangkok from the city in December.

Customs sleuths also suspect that the smuggled gold was being disposed to gold traders in the state and neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. "We urge the passengers not to get trapped by the smugglers as we have our own intelligence units to nab such passengers and it is almost impossible to get away with the smuggled gold," added the sleuth.