A simple souvenir shop inside the Chennai airport has been revealed as a front for gold smuggling. On Thursday, the Air Intelligence Unit of the customs department arrested nine people on the suspicion that they worked with an international gold smuggling syndicate. Among the arrested are the shop owner Sabir Ali who also runs a YouTube channel – shoppingboyz, his shop workers and two transit passengers. In just two months, the accused are believed to have smuggled 267 kg of gold, which was worth Rs 167 crore. For this, they earned a commission of Rs 3 crore.
Sabir Ali reportedly got Rs 70 lakhs from a drug dealer residing in the United Arab Emirates so that he could set up a shop at the airport’s departure lounge. “Sabir Ali rented the shop paying a huge sum to Vidvedaa PRG, the third-party agency engaged by Airports Authority India (AAI), two months ago. He set up a souvenir shop as a front and employed seven youngsters to manage the shop,” The Times of India quoted R Srinivasa Naik, principal commissioner of customs, Chennai airport as saying.
A few days ago the Air Intelligence Unit of the customs department arrested one of Sabir Ali’s employees after they found him with one kg of powdered gold. Initially, it was suspected that the employee was the only one involved in the gold smuggling. However, further investigation revealed the whole nexus that included the shop workers.
As per TOI, the souvenir shop employees would bring the gold inside the airport. Since they carried the identity cards provided by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), they would often skip the security check. They would then give this money to other smugglers who would disguise themselves as passengers. A customs official told the publication, “The workers have been trained to hide gold in powder form in their rectum so as to avoid getting caught by the scanner. It is a well-oiled network and well executed plan.”
Based on their phone conversation, customs officers confirmed that the gang had smuggled 267kg of gold and that the gold arrived from Gulf countries as well as Singapore. The News Minute reported that a probe has been initiated to understand how the group managed to get their hands on the BCAS identity cards.
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