Mumbai: Customs officials here have mounted tighter vigilance in the wake of increasing involvement of airport and airlines staff members in gold smuggling cases as evidenced by a rise in the number of such cases.
“The arrests of airlines and airport staff in the past few months gave a clear signal that we are facing threats not only from gold smugglers, who, posing as passengers, illegally carry the yellow metal, but from people working at the airport premises, who have been acting as facilitators or middlemen,” said Milind Lanjewar, Additional Commissioner of Customs.
“Our operation should be more meticulous and discreet to unearth the role of the men working within the airport premises. Conducting such operations are more challenging. We have exposed some and sent them behind bars but there may be some more gold smuggling facilitators,” he said.
“We are doing our best to crack down on gold smugglers. With more determination, we are making concerted efforts to nab the smugglers and their facilitators. The vigil has been intensified,” he added.
What shocked the Customs officials was involvement of senior airport official Kanumetta Jagadish Babu, who was arrested on Friday for allegedly acting as a facilitator of a gold smuggling gang.
“We were stunned when we figured out the role of Babu, a terminal manager with Mumbai airport operator GVK,” Lanjewar said.
Babu and his two associates Shahbaaz Khan and Shaikh Mohsin were nabbed on Friday for allegedly trying to smuggle in 14 gold bars worth Rs 39.58 lakh brought from UAE, a Customs official said.
Previously too, the staff of airport and various airlines were found to be involved in gold smuggling manoeuvre.
In May, a passenger hid a packet of smuggled gold bars on a shelf of a duty free store, when store employee Panduranga Walavalkar had tried to help him sneak it out. Walavalkar was subsequently held by Customs.
On May 4, four gold bars were seized from Yuvraj Solanki, an employee at the airport. The bars were to be delivered to someone waiting outside.
On April 1, Ganpat Shinghade, working at housekeeping services at the airport, was caught with 5 kg of gold by a CISF constable.
In the last week of May, Customs officials arrested two employees Mohammed Kunnil Abbas and Puritan Singh of a private airlines, on charges of involvement in smuggling gold into the country, worth over Rs 76 lakh. Before this, Ramesh Bansode, an airlines employee, was arrested as he was waiting to receive Rs 1.27 crore worth of gold bars from a passenger arriving from Dubai.
In a bid to fight the menace, the Customs officials began sensitising the staff of the airport and airlines and are stressing on the ill-effects that would be faced by the people found to be involved in such activities.
“We have educated the personnel working in the airport. We informed that the kind of legal problems they would face once found involved in smuggling activities. We told employees that they would lose the jobs forever,” said Lanjewar.
While educating them, the Customs have also increased its surveillance. “We managed to uncover the role of the someairport staff for being facilitators in such cases. However, our vigil continues to be strong on passengers and airport staff in their efforts to curb the smuggling,” he added.
