Seven failed attempts at smuggling gold from Dubai to India are described. Smugglers hid gold in chair springs, airplane toilets, dates, and painted staples to avoid detection. One smuggler concealed gold in his rectum, but his awkward walk gave him away. Another scheme involved using Indian expatriates returning from Dubai as couriers, with each carrying one kilogram of gold. However, customs officials discovered and stopped these various smuggling attempts through diligent inspection and growing awareness of smuggling methods.

1. Ever since India
hiked the import
duty on gold,
UAE residents
have been using
every ounce of
their creativity
to smuggle the
yellow metal to
the sub-continent.
Mazhar
Farooqui rounds
up seven ingenious but
failed gold smuggling bids
in recent months.
SPRING A SURPRISE
At first glance customs officials in
Bengaluru found nothing suspi-
cious in a cargo of chairs arriving
from Dubai. But they nearly fell
off their chairs when an officer
instinctively ripped the fabric
of one of the chairs from the
consignment. The coil springs
in each chair were made of gold,
weighing 1.5kg in total.
LOO AND BEHOLD
If there’s one innovative smuggling bid
traffickers won’t be feeling quite so
flush about, it most definitely is this.
Smugglers hid 32 gold biscuits in the
toilet of an Air India plane flying from
Dubai to Chennai.
They got off in Chennai, hoping their
accomplices boarding the onward
flight to Delhi would pick up the gold.
The plan was good as there would’ve
been no customs checks on domestic
passengers. But officials got the better
of them. A similar plan backfired for
smugglers trying to sneak 280 bars
from Dubai to Dhaka on a flydubai
plane. They had to abandon the gold
mid-way or rather mid-air when they
sensed police presence in Bangladesh.
The metal, worth over $1 million was
later found in the plane toilet by the
cleaning crew.
COURIERS
Some smugglers have found a perfectly
legal way to sneak in gold. They use
Indian expats as couriers as they are
permitted to bring one kg of gold if they
are returning after six months. This ex-
plains how 80kg of gold made its way
to Calicut from Dubai. Each courier
carried one kilo. Even after paying im-
port day, they would have made a profit
of nearly Dh30,000 per kilo bar.
REAL BUMMER
Smugglers take great pains to
hide gold from airport customs.
But for this dumb crook flying
from Sharjah to Jaipur the pain
was literal – he had concealed
one kg of gold in his rectum. Un-
fortunately for him, his awkward
walk gave him away.
SEEDY IDEA
Here’s another laborious effort
that sparkles with creativity
and originality. Who’d hollow
out dates and replace their
seeds with similar size chips of
melted gold? But a man flying
to Pune from Dubai did just that
to try and cart away nearly half
a kilogram of gold to his home
country. But officials in India got
a whiff of the plan and busted
him as soon as he landed.
PIN UP BOY
As smuggling tricks go, it was certainly worth more than its weight
in gold. Understandably so, customs officials in Delhi saw nothing
amiss when a passenger flew in from Dubai with three cardboard
cartons containing a TV set, food processor and some clothes.
They were about to let him go when an officer noticed the boxes
had too many pins stapled to them. Out of curiosity, he removed
one of them and got it checked. The lab results were shimmering.
Each of the 109 pins was made of gold but had been painted grey
to make them look like normal staples.
golden
ideasgone
horriblywrong
Gold smuggling
special
report
1,500tonnes, the annual
demand for gold in India
80passengers on
a recent Dubai-
Calicut flight were
found carrying one
kilo each
200tonnes of smuggled
gold entered India in
2013, not counting
900 tonnes smug-
gled via gold carriers
bollywood
celebs
indubai
goldwar
XPRESS gives you a low down
on some of the Bollywood’s
biggest celebrities who have
served as brand ambassadors
for leading jewellery groups at
one time or another:
AishwaryaRai, along with
her father-in-law Amitabh
Bachchan
represents
Kalyan
Jewellers in
India at the
national and
international
level. For
regional promotions, Kalyan has
also signed on other stars like
Nagarjuna in Andhra Pradesh
and Sivaraj Kumar in Karnataka.
KareenaKapoor donned the
role of brand ambassador
for Malabar Gold last year,
replacing Hema Malini.
HrithikRoshan is the latest
to be added to Joy Alukkas’
star-studded list of brand
ambassadors. South Indian
stars R. Madhavan, Suresh Gopi,
Kiccha Sudeep and Allu Arjun
have also endorsed the brand.
Sridevi is the brand
ambassador for Tanishq,
which has had such names
as Amitabh Bachchan and
Jaya Bachchan representing
it earlier.
Nargis Fakhri debuted as
the face of Damas during its
last Diwali campaign. Esha
Gupta was the previous brand
ambassador for the line.
Nargis represents Damas
brands like Legacy, Gehna,
Mira, Harmony and Ananya.
ShraddhaKapoor, the
Aashiqui 2 star, endorses the
Parineeta and Nirvana lines of
jewellery for the Gitanjali Group.
You Speak
„„ What should be done to
prevent gold smuggling?
„„ Should India reduce the
import duty on gold?
Write to us at:
„„ editor@xpress4me.com
„„ www.xpress4me.com
„„ sms 5101
HANDLE WITH CARAT
When officials at Sharjah Airport
spotted this Indian passenger
looking more nervous than Dolly
Parton in a gale force wind, they
asked him to unpack his lug-
gage. Finding nothing objection-
able, they checked his bag. On
closer scrutiny they discovered
it’s handle was not made of steel,
but, hallelujah, glittering gold. The
man was arrested along with the
UAE jeweller who had replaced the
original handle.
ILLUSTRATION: ador t. bustamante
10 11
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