Customs officials seize gold worth Rs 1.5 crore from contract workers at Chennai airport

CHENNAI: Customs officials seized gold worth Rs 1.5 crore at the Chennai airport on Tuesday upon intercepting two contractual workers who had hidden it inside a trolley carrying bathroom cleaning supplies.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence HAD received information that huge quantities of gold would be being smuggled into Chennai. Acting on the tip-off, DRI officers arrived at the Chennai airport on Monday around midnight and monitored the passengers who were arriving from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah.

The officers noticed Deepak (30), a contractual labourer who along with a colleague, was pushing a trolley carrying bathroom cleaning supplies. On suspicion, the officers intercepted the duo, and when they checked the trolley, they found three small packets from which 2.2 kg of gold worth Rs 1.5 crore was recovered.

Both workers were arrested and during inquiry, they said that a transit passenger headed towards Sri Lanka who arrived from Dubai had kept the gold in the toilet from where the two workers collected the gold. They were taking the gold outside the airport before they got detained.

The officers also found that Deepak whose shift was at night had changed his work timings in order to collect the smuggled gold from the toilet.

Both contractual workers were taken to the DRI office in T Nagar here. Further investigation is on.