Mumbai It’s been a busy weekend for custom officials at the Mumbai airport. The department has seized heroin worth ₹34.79 crore and gold worth ₹4.53 crore in seven separate smuggling attempts at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
Customs officials said that the heroin was seized from a female passenger who arrived from Kenya.
“The contraband was concealed in a tailor-made cavity inside a trolley bag. The passenger has been arrested and remanded to judicial custody for 14 days,” said a Customs officer.
Meanwhile, the gold was seized in varying quantities in six different checks made over Saturday and Sunday.
In the first case, gold dust packets concealed in a jacket with multiple pockets were recovered from an Indian lady who had arrived from Dubai. The packets weighed a total of 4518 grams and were valued at ₹2.14 crore. Over 360 grams of gold, hidden in the copper coated transformer wiring of a mixer-grinder, worth ₹18.90 lakh, from the luggage of an Indian passenger, also returning from Dubai.
“We also seized four gold rings worth ₹36 lakh concealed inside the wheels of two trolley bags. We were alerted after the image of the two bags on the baggage scanner machine looked unusual,” said a Customs officer.
Meanwhile, in two different instances, gold bars worth ₹72 lakh and ₹42 lakh were seized from Indian passengers; gold dust and pieces collectively worth ₹68 lakh were seized on the basis of intelligence from a passenger who arrived from Bangkok, officials said.