14 kg smuggled gold seized, two foreigners held

Directorate of Revenue Intelligence sleuths on Thursday seized 14 kg of gold worth over Rs 5 crore from an aircraft at the international airport here and arrested a South Korean and Chinese national in this connection.

Following a tip, DRI officials rummaged the area around seat numbers 31 A and 32 A of an Air India flight AI 952 which arrived from Dubai in the early hours of Thursday.

They found seven long strips, wrapped in black adhesive tape, concealed inside hollow pipes located under both the seats, DRI's Hyderabad Zonal Unit said in a release.

The two passengers told the DRI officers that they had carried the gold with them from Dubai and concealed it beneath their seats before exiting from the aircraft.

On unwrapping the black tapes as many as 112 gold bars of 24 karat gold, weighing a total of 14 kg valued at Rs 5.46 crore were found, the DRI said.

Both the passengers admitted that the gold was smuggled into the country and they did not have any documents to prove the licit purchase or import of the gold, the release said.