The Customs and security agencies have been on high alert at the three international airports — Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode — for over the past six months against the smuggling-in of gold from Gulf countries but gold is continuing to flow illegally into God’s Own Country through these entry points without break.
The development has prompted Central agencies like the Intelligence Bureau to probe the sources, modes of smuggling and actual destinations of such illegal consignments. Though smuggling is taking place through all the three airports, the Kozhikode international airport at Karippur seems to be the favourite entry point for the smugglers.
Agencies have now put under their scanner certain small towns in Kozhikode district and other northern Malabar areas known for large numbers of jewellery showrooms. large-scale smuggling of gold and incidents of money-funneling from the Gulf have strengthened the suspicion of the agencies that these activities could have connections with terrorist activities.
Authorities now think that gold is being smuggled into Kerala in some way or the other by most of the 120 flights reaching Kerala airports from Gulf every week.
“The customs has confiscated about half a quintal of gold at the three airports in the past three months. But what do we know about the gold we haven’t been able to catchIJ” asked a Customs official at the Kochi airport.
As per statistics, 1993 kilograms of gold had been brought to Kerala by paying the required duty through the Karippur airport in 2013. The gold legally transported into Kerala through the Kochi airport from outside last year was 283 kilos. But only 37 kilos of gold had been brought legally to the State last year through the Thiruvananthapuram airport. However, Customs officials say that the volume of gold smuggled through the airports into Kerala may be several times larger than this. “There are people among us who think that a minimum of four to eight kilos of gold is being smuggled into Kerala by every flight from Gulf. There are others who think that this could be higher still,” said the official.
The authorities have always suspected that certain travel agencies with close connections with Customs officials have involvement in gold smuggling. But the arrest of two airhostesses at Karippur airport sometime ago proved that employees of airline companies and airports were also part of the gold-smuggling racket.
According to an official, the airline staff’s help is vital for the method of smuggling gold by hiding it under the seats of flights operating to domestic airports after landing in India. He says it is very difficult to crack such a case of smuggling as it is impossible to check every seat-bottom of every flight.
“In this method, the carrier who boards with the gold from the Gulf city would disembark at the first international airport in India while the gold remains under the seat. When the flight lands at the next domestic airport, it is removed and taken out of the airport by another smuggler who would have occupied the particular seat at the international airport,” the official said.
Karippur has always been the favourite airport as far as gold smugglers are concerned but enhanced alert and security procedures there are forcing them to bring it through the Thiruvananthapuram airport nowadays. Mangalore in Karnataka, lying adjacent to Kasaragod in Kerala, also is a favourtie airport for gold smugglers.
“One of the problems is that many of these smugglers are highly influential people,” said a lawyer specializing in Customs-related cases, referring to the alleged connections of Faiz, a smuggler, who had created news with his nightly visit to a high-security prison and a photograph in which he was seen with State Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala.