Around 2.5 kg of jewellery estimated to be worth Rs. 70 lakh was discovered and seized by the Customs and Central Excise officials from the toilet of an Air India flight that arrived on Monday at Goa airport from Dubai.
Apart from the airlines staff, passengers listed on the flight are also under the scanner of the investigators.
This is the third instance this year of unclaimed gold being found on an Air India flight, which arrived from Dubai to Goa.
"The gold was hidden in the toilet on the flight which arrived here this morning. We found 2.5 kg of unclaimed gold worth Rs 70 lakh," a Customs spokesperson was quoted as saying by PTI.
After the officials completed their formalities, the flight continued for Bengaluru from Goa.
Gold smuggling in India
Smuggled gold seized at airports in India went up from Rs. 557.83 crore in 2013-14 to Rs. 832.08 crore in 2014-15. Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, France, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the UAE and the UK are the countries from where passengers smuggle gold into India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said in Lok Sabha in a written reply on Dec. 4 while referring to gold seized from airports in the period 2012-13 to 2014-15.
A combination of factors makes gold smuggling into India lucrative.
"Besides, increase in custom duty rates, factors like fluctuation in international price of gold and other restrictions on import of gold also contribute to the increase in incidences of gold smuggling," Jaitley had said.
