A young woman was arrested with a gold bar, weighing 1kg, at the Shahjalal International Airport on Tuesday night.
Mariyam Akhter, 24, was arrested with the bar around 10pm immediately after her arrival at Dhaka on a Malaysian Airlines flight from Malaysia, said Ayesha Akhter, an assistant director of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) at the airport.
“A CIID team seized the gold bar by searching her body while she was crossing the immigration,” said the CIID official.
Officials of the CIID at the airport said that the detainee who hailed from Munshiganj admitted that she carried the smuggled gold from Malaysia, which was given by a man in Malaysia.
She was handed over to Airport police station where a case was also filed in this connection.
Earlier on Monday night, the CIID personnel also seized 20 gold bars weighing 20kg and arrested 4 people, including a security guard of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB).
Sources said the customs and police officials seized around 70kg of gold at Dhaka airport and around different places of the capital, while over 100kg gold was seized in Chittagong and Sylhet this month.
Smuggling of gold has become frequent since the Indian authorities imposed some restrictions on the import of gold.
A section of unscrupulous officials and employees of different government and private organisations, including customs, NSI, the CAAB and different airlines, working at the airports have been aiding the smugglers.
In September last year, an investigation committee identified at least 18 officials of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines for their involvement in two separate hauls of smuggled-gold.