Bangladeshi national held with foreign currency

Gold worth around Rs 75 lakh and foreign currencies worth Rs 98 lakh were recovered at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport on Wednesday.

Gold and currency notes were recovered from two passengers travelling through the city airport.

One person has been arrested while nine other persons have been held for interrogation in this connection so far. Customs officials are interrogating the arrested persons.

According to the senior custom officials, foreign currencies were found in the possession of a Bangladeshi national Suman Ahmed who was carrying the currencies in the country. The accused was going to Kuala Lumpur in an Air Asia flight. The Customs officials arrested the accused at the time of checking. While carrying out a search, the officials recovered the foreign currencies from the accused.

A senior official of Customs said that in last couple of months, customs authorities have seized gold brought illegally into the country on a number of occasions. The customs officials also recovered Indian currencies worth nearly Rs 69 lakh. The officials said that entire amount were in the denominations of Rs 2,000. The investigating officials are interrogating the accused to know where they had received the amount from and the foreign currencies.

The Custom officials held 9 persons who were travelling to the city from Bangkok and gold weighing around 2.5 kg were recovered from them.

Acting on a tip-off, officials started checking the luggage brought by those passengers and found the gold items from their possessions. The investigating officials are probing if the accused were a part of any international gold smuggling racket.

According to the preliminary investigation, the officials suspect that the accused were smuggling the gold that was seized at the airport. Police were trying to know the other people involved in the incident.