Gold smuggling goes unabated at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport allegedly in connivance with some dishonest officials.
Everyday shipments of big chunks of illegal gold enter the country through the airport but few of them come into the notice of law enforcers, said a source at the airport.
And that too come to light only when the secret deal between the smugglers and those alleged airport officials falls through.
Gold are being recovered from every nook and cranny of the airport even from washrooms and toilets.
The customs and intelligence officials in their latest moves seized 24 gold bars and arrested a man in this connection on Tuesday night.
A week earlier, customs officials seized 200gm gold from the battery slot of a laptop on Wednesday noon.
Not only Shahjalal Airport gold are now also smuggled through Sylhet Osmani International Airport and Chittagong Shah Amanat International Airport.
In most cases ring leaders of the smuggling racket remain behind the scenes.
Members of police, intelligence and customs department say it has crossed all previous records. Almost every day gold are smuggled into Bangladesh from Dubai and Singapore through the airports.
A section of influential businessmen, law enforcers, officials of civil aviation department, security department and customs department are involved in gold smuggling, said a number of sources.
Members of intelligence department say around 15 organised syndicates having links to the smuggling rackets are active at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
Several gold traders from Shakharibazar area in the capital are allegedly operating those rackets. The largest haul of smuggled gold entered the country this year. The customs department recovered 33Kg of gold on Tuesday. An official of 583 No flight of Dubai Airways informed the law enforcers about a haul of smuggled gold after some bomb-like objects in the flight washroom grew suspicion in them.
Later, the customs department recovered the gold worth around Tk11.12bn.
Ornaments worth around Tk1m were recovered on October 10 and 11Kg of gold on September 24 from the Shahjalal Airport.
Members of the customs department of the airport told the Dhaka Tribune that they had seized around 230Kg of gold from the airport since August 30 this year. Besides several shipments of illegal gold have been seized from Sylhet and Chittagong airports.
The biggest smuggled gold shipment was seized by customs department on July 24 at the Shahjalal International Airport. They recovered 124Kg of gold from the panel box of DC-10 of Bangladesh Biman that came from Dubai.
Three months have gone by but the masterminds behind the illegal shipments are yet to come to light even after the formation of the investigation committee.
What is more mysterious is the customs department has not yet filed any case in connection with the smuggling.
When contacted Mahfuzul Islam, Additional deputy commissioner of Detective Branch of Police, told the Dhaka Tribune that they could do nothing as no case had been filed in this regard.
However, a team led by director general of customs and intelligence department of the airport Mainul Khan was due to fly to Dubai to investigate the incident.
According to the airport authorities, more than 3,600 people have been arrested in recent years for their involvement in smuggling.