Gold concealed in electronic equipment apprehended at the Visakhapatnam airport.
The DVD players and microwave ovens they arrived with were worth their gold - literally. Fifty-six passengers, many from Tamil Nadu, have been booked under the Customs Act at the Visakhapatnam airport for allegedly smuggling in a whopping 63 kilos of gold in an assortment of electronic items.
Those questioned landed on three different flights from Kuala Lumpur and Singapore between last night and this morning. Most of them were not regular fliers and were being used as couriers to smuggle in the gold, said police sources.
Sources said a tip-off from Chennai alerted officials to the gold that was being brought in. The first kilo of smuggled gold was recovered from the handbags of three women passengers, said sources.
Then an extensive check of electronic gadgets in the luggage on the three planes revealed the rest of the hidden treasure.
The gold -- valued at Rs 16.85 crore -- was concealed in the form of magnets in amplifiers, coils, speaker stand and other internal parts so it could escape detection during X-Ray checks at the airports.
"It was found that these passengers used to go from Chennai to Malaysia and Singapore and was arriving at various international airports with smuggled gold," said a
communique from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.