Smugglers turn creative during Covid pandemic

A savage second wave of Covid-19 has been no deterrent to narcotics and gold smugglers. In fact, say customs officials, methods deployed to hide contraband goods have become more ingenious.Contraband has been hidden in face masks, emergency lights, TVs and pasta-making machines, melted to form caps for water heaters fitted in airplane WCs, woven into T-shirts and concealed in what would be politely described as the nether regions of passengers’ bodies.82873376The last method was used on April 19 and 27, when a woman and a man, respectively, were caught trying to smuggle in gold. Both times, the value was Rs 25 lakh-plus. Additionally, since April 15, there have been at least five major seizures of heroin at Delhi airport, according to available information, the total value of which is Rs 160 crore. In one incident alone, heroin worth Rs 98 crore was seized.There were as many as 22 cases involving seizure of 23 kg of gold valued at about Rs 10 crore between April 1 and May 19, according to a customs official deputed at Chennai airport. The figure is striking, considering there are only three to six international flight arrivals a day in Chennai, down from 10-13 daily arrivals at the beginning of April.“We have, of late, found smugglers using face masks, LED televisions and emergency lights to conceal gold,” Rajan Chaudhary, commissioner of customs at Chennai airport, told ET. “Then we detected gold granules in containers of Tang instant drink that came in a postal parcel from Dubai. Also, during searching an aircraft, we detected a specially crafted gold disk fitted as the cap of a water heater in the toilet.” Chaudhary spoke about a new trend of passengers leaving gold in the aircraft itself when it flies an international leg.Someone else retrieves it when the aircraft flies on a domestic route.In Hyderabad, on April 29, a passenger arriving from Dubai was arrested after it was found that he was concealing a 24-carat gold bar in a pasta-making machine.In another instance at the airport, on April 21, gold in paste form was found to be concealed in the inner layers of a specially designed T-shirt. And at Lucknow airport, on April 14, a woman passenger was caught while attempting to hide 2.3 kg of gold paste worth Rs 1.13 crore in her inner wear.Tila Kumar, an assistant professor in the department of sociology of Delhi School of Economics, says rampant smuggling during the pandemic peak is possibly triggered by massive job loss abroad. “I suspect some smart Indians who have lost jobs abroad are new recruits to such a network. Smuggling is all about making easy money till you are caught. Some of them are also taking risks, possibly thinking that customs officials may not check them physically all the time because of fear of the virus,” he said.In fact, regular seizure of MDMA, a party drug consumed mostly by youngsters, as well as the recent confiscation of Khat leaves, which contain a powerful stimulant, in Chennai, hint at a rising demand for narcotics at a time when regular entertainment avenues are shrinking, customs officials say.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/349xLqg