Jordanians held at KIA for smuggling gold

Sleuths of the Air Intelligence Unit of Customs at Kempegowda International Airport thwarted gold smuggling attempts in three separate instances and seized the yellow metal weighing 7.5 kg worth Rs 2.3 crore.

In the first case, 6.5 kg of gold was seized from two Jordanians. The two were identified as Abdel Rahman J A Rizik Al Dardasawi (38) and Saleh Talal Yousef Herzallah (38), both cloth and shoe traders from Jordan.

Additional Commissioner of Customs, Harsha Vardhan Umre said Dardasawi had arrived from Dubai by Emirates flight EK-0564. The sleuths checked his baggage and found gold concealed in three packets wrapped with brown tape in specially made pockets in his trousers.

Meanwhile, officials went through the flight manifesto and zeroed in on another passenger, Saleh Talal Yousef Herzallah with a similar travel itinerary as that of Dardasawi’s. Another team was sent to Hotel Crown where Herzallah was just checking in. He was searched and 3.250 grams of gold was seized from him.

Interrogation revealed that they were not known to each other, but had been engaged by a mutual friend in Jordan to meet a person who would hand over a packet of gold to them to be delivered in India. They were assured of free flight tickets to and from Amman to Bengaluru.

Two other cases

In another instance, a construction worker from Malaysia, identified as Muniasamy Ponnaiah, was detained by customs who seized cut gold pieces worth Rs 4.5 lakh from him. He arrived by Air Asia Flight No. AK-053 around 10.45 pm from Kuala Lumpur on Monday. In another case, sleuths seized one kilogram of gold from underneath a passenger’s seat on an Indigo Flight No. 6E-096 from Dubai which landed in Bengaluru at 4.30 pm. Gold was concealed in a tubing under the seat of a passenger identified as K Naushad, a native of Kozhikode.