Ticket to home: Labourers made gold ‘carriers’

NEW DELHI: Smuggling operations post the Covid-19 pandemic have changed significantly. While daily cases being recorded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport are around 10% of what they used to be, the ‘carriers’ are not trained men and women, but instead, migrants who cannot afford to purchase airline ticket.
Customs officials said in several cases, they found labourers and people from the lower economic strata being used to smuggle gold or drugs in exchange for an airline ticket, with the smugglers promising them a journey to their hometown.
In order to avoid arrests, the gold is being distributed to several such ‘carriers’ so that neither is carrying more than 1kg. “In a recent case, 11 people were caught, each carrying less than 1kg of gold and while the gold was seized, only large recoveries can lead to an arrest. So in many cases, while a case is made against the labourers, there are no arrests as the amount is so little,” a Customs official told TOI.
The officer stated that while passenger profiling is generally done for smugglers coming out of certain regions, like Rajasthan and Kerala, no such recoveries has been made upon the resumption of commercial flight operations.
“The usual modus operandi would be concealing the gold in the rectum, or even turning it into gold-coloured paste. All these methods are not coming through at the Delhi airport, which is an indicator that the regular channels in terms of experienced carriers is yet to resume,” said the official, adding that those caught smuggling gold over the past two months have generally been bringing them in their luggage.
On August 6, two men were apprehended at IGI, trying to smuggle gold bars weighing 466 grams from Riyadh. Later in the same week, four more men were apprehended bringing in gold biscuits, weighing around 800 grams.
“The profiling of the men showed that generally, those arriving in with the gold had no prior experience and therefore were not concealing it in the rectum or using ingenious ways. It appears that they are promised a ticket journey in exchange for smuggling gold, where they are instructed to hand it over to another person at the airport,” the official added.