One Crore Smuggled Gold Recovered at Mumbai Airport

In a strange case of smuggling, the authorities at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai managed to recover gold worth Rs. 1.04 crores from a toilet bin. The gold had been carried into the country by a passenger who traveled on Jet Airways flight 9W-537 from Dubai, named M. Kunhi Koppa Irshad. Members of the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) were tipped off about the passenger carrying gold on his person, and they tailed him from the moment he disembarked from the aircraft.

In a panic, the passenger made his way to the toilet, where he was caught disposing of 3.7 kgs of gold, split into 32 gold bars. As he rushed to leave the terminal building, he was arrested and taken in for questioning. The gold was summarily confiscated. During his interrogation, the passenger admitted to being given the gold with the instructions that it was to be delivered to the precise location where he had left it, the garbage bin in the toilet, after which he was to be compensated for it.

Cases of smuggling gold into India are commonplace, and airport authorities have long been tasked with enforcing the laws pertaining to how much gold an individual can carry into the country. The current rules stipulate that males can carry gold worth Rs. 50,000 and women, Rs. 100,000 without incurring duty on the material. In light of this, the Rs. 1.04 crores worth of the precious metal carried by Irshad was far in excess of the permissible amount.