Spike in customs duty on gold import triggers innovative ways of smuggling with people risking their.

Old style gold smuggling which was in fashion in the heyday of the deadly duo of Haji Mastan and Sukur Narain Bakhiya, is back.

With the rise in customs duty on gold imports, contraband gold is entering India with people risking their necks to smuggle in small amounts of the yellow metal. In short, the gold rush has returned for the smugglers.

If the smugglers are salivating at the prospect of making huge money, it is there for all to see. In fact, they seem to be wasting little time.

In the last ten days alone, customs officials at the Indira Gandhi International airport have seized large quantities of gold and arrested at least 10 people - the last on June 19, when four passengers were arrested.

With high stakes, those involved in gold smuggling were introducing ever new skills to camouflage the precious metal. At Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, officials were stumped by one person who was innovative enough to have almost slipped through.

The gold had been stored as stapler pins punched on food processor and corrugated boxes. At Kolkata's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport, another man had concealed the gold bars in his lower abdomen.

"We had received intelligence on the passengers and when we intercepted him we found nothing odd. But a thorough check of the baggage and the expertise of the officers found gold concealed as stapler pins," said highly placed sources.

In Mumbai, customs officials needed to take one look at Abdul Rehman to realise he was hiding something. The 35-year-old had arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport from Dubai on an Emirates flight carrying just one hand bag.

He was walking through the green channel when he was stopped. The metal detector started beeping around his waist but nothing was found in his baggage or clothes.

After considerable interrogation, he told the customs officials that he was carrying five gold biscuits weighing about 500 g in his lower abdomen. In fact, Rehman had taken care to wrap the biscuits in carbon paper before pushing the gold inside his body.

Customs officials said that carbon paper is commonly used by smugglers who believe any object wrapped this way will not be picked up by airport scanners.

"Smugglers do not usually want to smuggle huge amounts of gold into the country. Rather, they focus on bringing in gold in small amounts," sources said, adding, "The problem was not this acute when the import duty was 6 per cent. It is only now, after it has been hiked to 8 per cent, that profits on smuggling the metal have increased. This has led to more smugglers trying to bring gold into India."

The sources said that passengers coming from the Gulf countries are on the radar. Gold costs less in these countries, especially Dubai, making it lucrative to smuggle gold.

Earlier, the most common method adopted by smugglers was to hide gold bars and coins in the soles of their shoes. This was back in the 80s and 90s when smuggling was common.

Other ploys included concealing the contraband in false cavities of bags and in body cavities. Among others arrested was 22-year-old Mohammad Al Shaer Rana, a Palestinian civil engineering student in Cairo, who revealed an new way of concealing the booty.

He too had tried to walk out through the green channel when he was stopped.

A search of his hand bag yielded nothing. A thorough check showed he was carrying 10 gold bars, each weighing one kg each, in his jeans and two small gold biscuits.

The pockets had been modified for the purpose. Rana is believed to have said in his interrogation that he was promised a commission of $500 dollars if he handled the transaction.

Smugglers are known to change their modus operandi once a particular operation goes bust. For instance earlier Indian nationals were given commission for gold smuggling.

After many of them were caught they decided to get foreign nationals involved. The lure of huge profits means that people are not afraid to involve their family members.

The authorities are waking up to the challenge ahead, realising there will be more instances of smuggling and that for every person caught, there will be many more who will go through the net.

Abdul Rehman, the man from Dubai caught at Chhatrapati Shivaji airport, reportedly told customs officials, that he had already made 13 trips to India from Dubai, on each occasion carrying gold inside his body. It left officials wondering how much contraband had slipped through.

Source : indiatoday.intoday.in