Customs officers seized 25 gold bars from the luggage of a plane at Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong Saturday afternoon.
“Customs officers found the gold bars in the handle of a bag in a plane around 12:05pm,”said Mohammad Anisur Rahman, inspector and assistant revenue official of Chittagong Customs in Shah Amanat International Airport
He said, “The bag was found abandoned in an Air Arabia plane. It arrived at the airport from Doha, Qatar around 9pm on Friday.”
Airport sources said no one was detained in connection to the incident as the law enforcer could not identify the bag’s owner.
The estimated weight of the bars was 250, tolals worth Tk15m.
The bars were sent to Bangladesh Bank through the Chittagong Customs House, Anisur said.
He added, the bag’s owner might have sensed that something was wrong and left the plane without taking it with him.
Existing laws allow a person to carry a maximum of 200gm of gold by paying necessary duty at the airport, said the customs official.
Earlier from July 23 to October 1, Chittagong Customs conducted five separate drives in the planes coming from abroad and detained five people with total 232 gold bars.