VASCO: The Air Intelligence Wing of the Commissionerate of Customs, Goa Unit on Wednesday seized 636 grams of gold worth Rs 17 lakh in two separate smuggling attempts involving two Bhatkal natives through Goa International Airport at Dabolim.
According to officials of Goa Customs, they intercepted a passenger, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka who had arrived in Goa by Qatar Airways flight from Doha on Wednesday morning.
“The passenger had concealed 374 grams of gold in form of jewellery and raw gold inside the handle of non-stick frying pan and inside the two door handles of a mortised lock. The gold jewellery was recovered from the hand bag, while the raw gold was found while checking the baggage,” said Assistant Commissioner of Customs Gaurav Kumar Jain.
In another seizure, the officers of Air Intelligence Unit of Goa Customs also seized 262 grams of gold worth Rs 7 lakh from another Bhatkal native, who too had concealed the gold inside the handles of non-stick cookware. The said passenger had come down to Goa from Dubai by Air India Flight AI-994 on Wednesday morning.
“The recovered gold has been seized under Sections 110 and 111 of the Customs Act 1962 on the reasonable belief that the same is smuggled and is liable for confiscation under Section 111 of Customs Act 1962. As the value of seized gold was less than Rs 20 lakh, both the passengers were allowed to go after the seizure formalities,” Jain told.
Meanwhile, in last one week, this is the third incident of gold seizure in a concealed form at Goa Airport. Last week, Customs recovered 161 grams of gold from a Kerala native.
