The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on Tuesday arrested an airline employee and two others outside the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad and seized 4.194 kg gold worth Rs 1.34 crore. The employee was also carrying Rs 3.6 lakh in cash, which was seized by authorities.
The employee was reported to be working with Air India SATS and was held while in possession of 35 gold bars, which he smuggled and was handing over to two others outside the airport.
The gold has been seized under the Customs Act, 1962. The accused are being questioned and further details are awaited.
Just last month, DRI officials said that they seized 1,269 grams of gold, valued at around Rs 40 lakh, from a passenger at the Rajahmundry airport in Andhra Pradesh. The gold was said to be smuggled from Sri Lanka.
Based on intelligence inputs, personnel from the Kakinada office of the DRI waited and intercepted a passenger who arrived from Hyderabad, on a flight on September 14.
Officials said that the accused was found to be carrying the gold in a paste form and had concealed it in his innerwear.
In July this year, DRI officials seized 1.12 kg of gold disguised as paste worth around Rs 34.57 lakh from a passenger in Hyderabad airport.
The passenger was travelling on a Madurai-Hyderabad bound flight. During examination, officials found two package weighing 1.850 kg in his hand luggage, after thorough investigation and tests, the officers determined that the packages of paste had gold content of 1.120 kg.
To extract the gold, officials heated the paste using kerosene. Later, after formulating the paste in laboratory, they could extract gold from the paste.