The customs officials at the Mumbai international airport claim to have acquired an advanced Door Frame Metal Detector (DFMD), which will specifically help them detect gold hidden inside a body cavity. Cust-oms officials claim that rectum concealment is now a “widely practiced trend” by smugglers world over and Mumbai has always been India’s gold smuggling hub. The machine, which officials claim is even more advanced than other DFMDs, was installed last week and will beep near that part of the body where the gold had been hidden.
According to customs officials, although gold smuggling from the Mumbai airport has seen a severe dip, there is a new and daring practice of concealing gold inside the rectum. “We lea-rnt of this after receiving information from our international counterparts and so we decided to procure the machine,” said a customs official at the airport.
Airport customs commissioner P.M. Saleem said that smugglers operate in periods when officials are least expecting them to. “They might try and lie low for a few years, giving us the feeling that smuggling has stopped, and then quickly transport a consignment when we are off guard,” he said.
According to assistant customs commissioner Sameer Wankhede (Air Intelligence Unit) smugglers now exploit smaller airports at Tier II cities like Pune, Lucknow and Jaipur where the checking isn’t very stringent.
However, the last instance where smugglers transported gold from the Mumbai airport was in 2011, where seven Sri Lankans were arrested from two hotels in Mumbai and 84 pieces of foreign marked gold biscuits worth `1.82 crore were recovered.