High import duty on gold makes smugglers more creative

Gold smugglers have found ingenious ways to smuggle the precious yellow metal into the country through the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), hoodwinking the Customs. LED flood lights, adaptors of electric hair trimmers, UPS devices, microwave ovens and transformers, and electronic devices are now being used. Sample this. In a case in August, the foil inside facial cream bottles were replaced with gold foil, and the cellphone casings made of gold were covered with mobile covers to avoid detection. Other methods include concealing gold in beadings of suitcases, gold zippers of baggage, and camouflaging gold wires and sheets with silver coating. There have been instances where women were used owing to a perception that it is a deterrent for officers to arrest them, said a senior Customs official. “We have seen a large number of women wearing similar set of jewellery, which is smuggled gold,” he said. Acknowledging the increase in gold smuggling, the Custom officials said that in most cases, the city was just a stopover and never an intended destination. Tight security at other airports such as Chennai, a hotspot for gold smuggling, made Bangalore a choice for smugglers to break their journey and take the land route into the neighbouring State. Most of these smugglers are reportedly from the Bhatkal–Mangalore belt, south Tamil Nadu region and Kerala. Gold smugglers from Sri Lanka and a few cases involving Chinese have been reported as well. -The Hindu