Rs 16.5 crore worth gold haul at Kempegowda airport

Bangalore City police on Saturday evening detained three persons from Tamil Nadu at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) and confiscated 54 kg gold worth Rs 16.5 crore.

The detained men were identified as Balasubramanya, Ravi Varma R and Ishwar Murthy, all aged around 30  and residents of Coimbatore.

“They did not have documents to justify the reason for transporting such a huge quantity of gold. They just had a photocopy of the gold purchase receipt, which did not seem genuine. We are quizzing them to obtain more details,” said Bangalore City Police Commissioner Raghavendra Auradkar.

Being an economic offence, the police have alerted the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Income Tax Department and the Customs Department.

The Kolkata police have arrested one person said to be an associate of the trio detained in Bangalore. Hence, they too have been informed about the development. They are likely to come here to question the trio, added Auradkar.

“I received a phone call on Saturday that three persons had boarded a Jet flight at Kolkata and are scheduled to alight in Coimbatore. The flight would land in Bangalore around 6 pm as KIA is a stopover destination. The caller told me there are three persons on board carrying a huge quantity of gold suspiciously,” said Auradkar.

The commissioner directed DCP (North East) T R Suresh, DCP (Crime) Abhishek Goel and Joint Commissioner (Law and Order-West) S Ravi to rush to the KIA. The police took the trio into custody after the flight landed. They were carrying three separate hand baggages which contained the gold, including 54 gold biscuits of 1 kg each and some ornaments, said the commissioner. During interrogation, the trio claimed that they were sales executives of a jewellery firm in Coimbatore. They claimed to have bought the gold from Scotiabank in Mumbai, but took the delivery in Kolkata by courier. They did not have a convincing reply to why they did not take the delivery at Coimbatore.

It is not known how they managed to carry the bags inside the flight.