Customs seize gold hidden inside dates at IGI airport

A 56-year-old man was arrested at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport for attempting to smuggle over 170gm gold by concealing it inside dates in his luggage, officials said on Thursday.

Customs officers said they recovered gold worth ₹15 lakh after individually inspecting several kilogrammes of dates he had brought from Jeddah.

In two other cases, customs officials arrested an Indian man for smuggling gold worth ₹1.3 crore in paste form and two Thai women attempting to smuggle marijuana worth ₹27 crore.

In the first case, officials of the customs department said the man had arrived on a flight from Jeddah on Wednesday evening and was intercepted by a team at the exit, on the basis of spot profiling.

“Suspicious images were detected during the X-ray scan, and when he passed through the door frame metal detector, a strong beep was heard,” said a senior customs official. Customs officials then manually inspected all his luggage thoroughly, including a bag of dates.

“He was carrying several kilogrammes of dates he had brought from Jeddah. A thorough check of the dates revealed small cylinders of gold that had been cut and concealed within some pieces of dates. The passenger had deseeded dates and stuffed them with the gold cylinders,” the official said, adding that it totalled to around 170gm of gold.

A video shared by customs also showed officers inspecting the dates before pulling out small pieces and placing them on a tray.

In the second case, a 24-year-old man arriving from Kuwait on February 24 was caught hiding gold paste inside a pouch wrapped in white adhesive tape. The paste was concealed in his underwear and in socks inside his baggage, officials said.

In the third case, two Thai women arriving from Phuket on February 19 were found smuggling 27 kg of marijuana, valued at ₹27.1 crore. “The Flight Rummaging Unit (FRU) detected 54 packets hidden in four bags,” an official said. A diagnostic test confirmed the substance as marijuana. The women were arrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.