International gold smuggling racket busted in India

The Air Intelligence Unit of the Customs Department at the Tiruchi airport, India have cracked an international gold smuggling racket and seized around five kgs of gold biscuits smuggled from Sri Lanka. The sleuths have arrested six Indian nationals for smuggling the gold worth Indian Rs 9 million Tuesday. The arrested persons had concealed the gold biscuits in their rectum and were instructed to deliver the goods to certain persons in Chennai. They landed in Tiruchi from Colombo and were planning to take the gold to Chennai via road. Customs Additional Commissioner Tiruchi D Sivasankaran, said based on a specific tip-off they kept a surveillance on the arrival hall of the airport. They intercepted A Theen from Mannady, Chennai and R Salim, A Sagubar Sathik, I Abdul Malik, A Abubacker and S Sagubar Sathik, all from Ramnathapuram district. Sivasankaran said all the six admitted to have smuggled gold biscuits concealed in their rectum. They also voluntary retrieved the biscuits and handed them over to the customs officials. "In all there were 47 gold biscuits totally weighing 4.86 kgs valued at Rs 89.9 lakhs," he said. They had not declared their possession of gold and attempted to evade payment of duty for the gold.   www.dailynews.lk/2010/07/22/news03.asp