A 45-year-old man had been arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) on charges of having attempted to smuggle in gold biscuits worth Rs.4.5 million this afternoon, Customs Director and media spokesman Leslie Gamini said.

The customs officers had detected two parcels containing nine gold biscuits concealed in his rectum, with a total weight of 900 grammes.

The suspect had flown to Singapore a couple of days ago to purchase LED bulbs worth Rs.18, 000 for transformer circuits, he said. “Our suspicions were raised by the relatively low cost of the goods that he had purchased which was nearly half the price of the value of his plane ticket. We decided to investigate this matter further, and this led to the detection.” Mr. Gamini said. (Chaturanga Pradeep)