Cabin crew held with 2.3kg gold at Shahjalal
A cabin crew of Biman Bangladesh Airlines was caught red handed while smuggling gold weighing around 2.3 kilogrammes at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka today.
Customs intelligence officials recovered five gold bars kept beneath two anklets wrapped over both the knees of cabin crew Mazharul Afsar, 37, Abdul Matin Talukder, inspector of customs intelligence told The Daily Star.
The BG 046 flight landed the airport from Singapore around 12:00 pm.
On secret information, the customs officials took all the crews of the flight in a checking counter and recovered the five gold bars worth Tk 1.16 crore from Afsar’s possessions, Talukder said.
Afsar has been working as a cabin crew at Biman for around 10 years. He was detained and a case is under process to be filed against him in this connection, the customs intelligence official said.
As the crews are not usually checked by security personnel, they are taking the benefits to smuggle gold into the country from abroad, another official expressed his suspicion seeking anonymity.
"Customs and customs intelligence officials often recovered unclaimed gold in and outside the aircrafts, we are suspecting that many of the gold are brought and left abandoned by the crew to be taken away by others," he added.
Customs officials and Armed Police Battalion (APBn) at the airport earlier arrested some people including staffs of Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (Caab) for their involvement in smuggling of gold over the last one year.
Earlier, on 19 July, Imam of a mosque of (Caab) was arrested for smuggling in around 1.8 kilograms of gold at the airport.
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