25kg gold found on man on wheelchair

A man coming out of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on a wheelchair feigning illness was busted for attempting to smuggle gold bars weighing 25kg yesterday.

Seeing that Jamil Akhter, 48, travelled abroad 13 times in the last six months, customs officials frisked him and found 250 gold bars attached to the lower part of his body.

It is the largest gold haul worth about Tk 12.5 crore seized by customs officers this year, HM Ahsanul Kabir, assistant commissioner of customs, said.

Jamil arrived at the airport from Singapore around 11:00pm. He was just about to go past the "green channel" half an hour later when officers intercepted him.

He attached the bars to his body before boarding the aircraft in Singapore and requisitioned a wheelchair claiming to be ill, the customs official said quoting Jamil. 

Customs officers seized a total of 110kg gold at the airport in Dhaka since January.

Last August, another man named Ataul Mujib was caught with 23kg gold while coming out of the airport on a wheelchair.

Both Jamil and Mujib are from Nilphamari's Syedpur upazila.

Jamil told officials that an unknown man handed him the bars at Singapore and asked him to take them out of the airport in Dhaka. Someone was supposed to take the gold from him. Legal action is being taken against him, Ahsanul added.

In another development, customs officials found six gold bars weighing 6kg wrapped in black tape in the toilet of an aircraft soon after it landed around 7:45am yesterday. No one could be arrested.