Mumbai: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) busted a gold smuggling racket from the porous Indo-Myanmar border and recovered 32.287 kg of the precious yellow metal worth Rs10.56 crore, an official said on Sunday.
Seven people were arrested, he said.Twelve consignments had earlier arrived on Concor Air, which handles the domestic air cargo, he said.
Acting on specific inputs, searches were carried out at the Concor Air’s facility here on Friday when the racket came to light, the official said. The suspicious consignments were claimed to be of jewellery, but a probe revealed they contained foreign-marked gold bars, he said.
“The consignments were found to be containing foreign-marked gold bars, including gold bars smuggled through Indo-Myanmar border and unmarked melted gold bars of 999 purity,” the official said.
The seized glod bars was valued at Rs10.56 crore, he said, adding seven people were arrested.
The probe revealed the gold bars were apparently smuggled into the country through various ports and then brought to Mumbai via domestic airlines to avoid stringent checking at the city’s two ports, the official said, adding the smuggled gold was brought here from various domestic airports, including Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Chennai and Kolkata, among others.
