In a further haul of smuggled gold, Personnel of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) seized a total of 60 gold-bars weighing to around 7.4 kilograms at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Three passengers of a flight were arrested immediate after the flight of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines arrived at Dhaka airport from Abudhabi Dubai via Osmani International Airport in Sylhet.
The identities of the detained persons were yet to be disclosed.
“Although the flight came to Dhaka from Abudhabi via Sylhet, the detained passengers came to Dhaka from Sylhet”, said Moinul Khan, director general of the CIID.
He said: “Immediate after the flight arrived in Dhaka, the smugglers of the gold handed over the gold bars to those passengers, who boarded on the flight from Sylhet and they went out of the airport.”
“We arrested those three passengers while they had been trying for returning Sylhet by a domestic flight,” said the CIID official.
“The gold bars were seized by searching their bodies.”
Smuggling of gold through the airports in Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong has turned rampant as well as seizure of gold is almost a regular incident.
The seizure of smuggled gold have increased significantly as over 1500kg gold were seized in last one year and three months with the records of the hauls of 124kg, 109kg, 107kg of gold.
Different officials at the airports said airports at Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet have become the main routes for the gold-smuggling rings since the neighbouring India imposed some restrictions.
The restrictions in India intensified the gold smuggling in Bangladesh leaving over 60 rings involved in gold smuggling arrogant.
A section of officials and employees of different government and non-government organisations at the airports like the officials at Customs, Biman, CAAB, crews of different airlines and security guards at the airports are among the persons who are used to play key roles in the smuggling process.