42kg smuggled gold seized at airport
Customs officials in separate drives seized 328 smuggled gold bars weighing around 42kg at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport yesterday.
They also detained four people at the airport in this connection.
On information, the customs officials detained two passengers--Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Sharif--in a flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at the airport from Dubai via Bangkok around 3:00pm, Hossain Ahmed, commissioner of customs, told The Daily Star.
After their detention, the officials searched the aircraft and recovered 270 gold bars weighing 32kg from its lavatory and under its passenger seat, said the official, adding that the gold bars worth around Tk 15 crore were wrapped in black scotch tape and black cloths.
Ahmed claimed that they had prior information about the gold bars and appearances of the detained passengers "who were smuggling the gold bars." He, however, said the duo claimed that they were not the possessors of the gold.
When asked, the customs commissioner explained that sometimes gold smugglers in the guise of passengers keep gold bars in an aircraft in an abandon condition and later, after its landing, aircraft cleaners or other such employees take the gold out of the airport and handed those over to them safely.
Meanwhile, customs intelligence officials detained one Mohammad Iqbal along with 50 gold bars weighting around 5.83kg at the airport around 2:30am, said Moinul Khan, director general of the custom intelligence.
Iqbal landed at the airport with the gold worth around Tk 2.91 crore from Dubai by a Qatar Airlines flight early yesterday, said the official.
Another team of customs officials arrested Amirul Islam, a passenger of Malaysian Airlines, with eight gold bars weighing 4.4kg from his shopping bag at the airport around 2:10am, said Sampriti Paramanik, assistant commissioner of customs.
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