Flyer caught with 11 gold biscuits in stomach

TNN | Apr 23, 2016, Kolkata: t took two minutes of interrogation and loads of laxative for airport customs officials to get hold of 11 gold biscuits swallowed by a smuggler. Desperate to sneak in the yellow metal through the check points at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, Mushir Ahmed, the smuggler swallowed those 11 biscuits one after another before he boarded the flight from Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night. The biscuits, weighing 100 gram each, cost around Rs 34.52 lakh.

Sceptical of the checkpoints in the Kolkata Airport, Mushir decided not to carry them on his body .Pretending to be a naive, Mushir stood near the conveyor belt like other passengers waiting for his baggage.But his movements were not normal since he was carrying so much gold in his stomach. By that time he had cleared immigration process. "But he looked tensed. We had already interrogated him before and were sure that that something was not right," said a customs official.

Mushir was put in the detention room, where air intelligence wing officials started questioning him. The metal detector was swiped all across his body and it beeped pointing at metal somewhere on his body .Mushir tried to act smart and claimed that there was nothing on his body and the machine was emitting false signals. But the officials would not yield and finally, he confessed to carrying gold biscuits in his stomach. The smuggler was only given water and laxative for the next few hours so that the gold can be acquired."These biscuits, weighing 1.1 kg, are valued at Rs 34.52 lakh," said a customs official. During interrogation Mushir told officials that he was scheduled to check in at a hotel on Marquis Street.

According to air-intelligence officials, there has been a drop in gold smuggling after 24 kg gold was seized in February this year. This alerted the smuggling rackets and they started looking for newer ways to evade the intelligence radar.