Group of 9 smugglers arrested, gold worth Rs 1 crore seized

When the officers were checking passengers who arrived from Colombo, they intercepted a group of nine passengers, including five women. While questioning one of them, Mohammad Gani (38) from Ramanathapuram, they found his replies to be evasive. When he was grilled further, he broke down and admitted to carrying gold in his rectum. During personal search, three gold pieces weighing 535 grams and one gold ring were also recovered from him. Other male passengers – Abbas (41) of Poyyathanallur, Maideen (51) of SP Pattinam and Mohamed Rafeek (37) – were also found hiding gold in their rectum and six bundles of rubbery spread with gold were seized.

Meanwhile, Karpagam (45) of Mylapore was the leader of the women smugglers’ group. The others were identified as Shameem Begum (45), Nagoor Amma (40) from Tiruchy, Srimathi (41) from Pappanad and Parameshwari (55) from Madurai. During the personal search, the officials recovered 15 bundles of rubbery spread with gold concealed in their rectum. This apart, five gold rings weighing about 25 grams each were also recovered. In total, 3.08 kg of gold pieces and jewels worth Rs 1 crore were seized from them. Further investigation is on.

In a separate incident, Customs officers seized peacock feathers weighing about 1.8 kg from a passenger on Tuesday. When the officers were checking passengers who were about to board the flight to Singapore on Tuesday, they found Mariyappan (40) from Chennai behaving in a suspicious manner and intercepted him. During the inspection, Mariyappan was found hiding peacock feathers inside his baggage. The officials recovered 800 feathers weighing about 1.8 kg worth Rs 9,000. The feathers were handed over to the Forest Department and Mariyappan was detained.