25 August 2022 09:22 pm
Nine Sri Lankan citizens were briefly detained on Wednesday at the Hyderabad airport for allegedly attempting to smuggle gold approximately worth Rs 3.8 crore.
Officials of the Air Intelligence Unit of Hyderabad Customs at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport intercepted the nine passengers who arrived on the Sri Lankan Airlines flight UL-175, and found them to have concealed 33 capsules of gold paste in their rectums. Each capsule had 100-160g of gold, the Indian Express reported.
The officials also recovered 18 such capsules in a bag that the flyers had allegedly carried with them and left unclaimed. The total gold recovered weighs 7.304 kg.
Each of the accused was carrying about 450-700g of gold, and since the value of the gold individually smuggled by each person does not exceed Rs 50 lakh, they were let off after serving notices to cooperate with the investigation,” an official told indianexpress.com.
The flyers are aged between 20 and 60 years and hail from Colombo. “Some of them had visited Hyderabad last month too. On suspicion, we examined their belongings and questioned them. They had no particular reasons to visit Hyderabad. Some were on tourist visas whereas others had business visas,” the official said.