Customs officials recovered another haul of smuggled gold from the toilet of a plane at Hazarat Shahjalal International Airport, this time weighing 13kg and arriving on an early morning flight from Malaysia.
Zakiya Sultana, commissioner of customs at the airport, confirmed the recovery, saying that a total of 120 gold bars worth around Tk6 crore were found on a Regent Airways flight that landed at Dhaka around 4:30am from Kuala Lumpur, but none claimed its ownership.
Qamrul Hasan, an assistant commissioner of the customs, said acting on information provided by the captain of the flight, two assistant commissioners – Abdul Alim and Shamsul Arefin – recovered the gold.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Assistant Commissioner Shamsul Arefin, however, claimed that they made the recovery as per their own intelligence information, adding that the captain had cooperated in it.
“As per our earlier information, we had been waiting for the arrival of the flight,” said Shamsul Arefin, adding that as they had no idea about the specific hiding place of the gold, they had scanned all the passengers from the suspected flight at the green channel.
Ehtesam-ul-Huq, an assistant superintendent of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) at the airport, said: “The gold bars were wrapped in black tapes in six packets and were hid behind the looking glass of a toilet. Perhaps someone of the flight had kept the gold bars in the toilet.”
A record quantity of over 550kg smuggled gold has been recovered at the airport in last 11 months.
According to sources, many smuggling rings are active at the airport and a section of officials and staff of different government and private agencies and crews of different flights are allegedly involved in moving the gold.
Customs officials alleged that Dhaka had turned into a route for smuggling since India increased taxes on gold.
