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In the wake of the hike in the import duty on gold, smuggling from abroad has seen a spectacular increase as profits on smuggled gold have gone up considerably.
Sources say that from the number of seizures made by the Customs at the country’s international airports, smugglers are finding innovative ways to ferry contraband gold. The official machinery is finding it difficult to match the ingenuity of smugglers.
Dubai is the main source of origin as gold is cheaper there and restrictions are few. The three international airports in Kerala, which receive the largest number of passengers from the Gulf sector, has seen a spike in gold smuggling. Often, low-paid Gulf workers who visit home on vacation are used as carriers by the racketeers.
C. Madhavan, Deputy Commissioner of Customs at the Kochi airport, told Business Line that over the past three months, 18 kg of gold was seized by his unit.
This week, in one of the largest seizures of gold in the recent past by any airport in the country, 5 kg of gold was seized from a single passenger arriving from Sharjah. He had concealed the gold bars, valued at Rs. 1.41 crore, under his airline seat. The passenger has been remanded in police custody for a fortnight.
Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode airports have also made several gold seizures over the past three months. Other airports, such as Ahmedabad and Mumbai, have also seen an increase in gold seizures.
CARRIERS
Madhavan said in most cases, the persons whom the Customs nab would be carriers. “The carrier normally would be the fourth or fifth link in the smuggling chain and he would be totally in the dark as to who really owns the contraband gold,” he pointed out.
Jewellers’ and gold merchants’ associations say it is the hefty hike in import duty imposed by the government on gold that had led to the spike in smuggling.
At present, air passengers are allowed to bring in limited quantity of duty-free gold in jewellery form. A female passenger, who has lived abroad for at least one year, can wear Rs 1 lakh worth of gold ornaments. In the case of males, the duty-free allowance is just Rs 50,000.
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