Gold smuggling squad busted, 70 gold bars and cash lump seized

Author: Paul Ploumis03 Jun 2014 Last updated at 08:25:41 GMT

NEW DELHI (Scrap Monster): The members of Detective Branch (DB) of Police, arrested members belonging to a gold smuggling band at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Dhaka, Bangladesh. A total of nine smugglers were arrested while they were trying to escape from the country. Seventy gold bars and huge amount of cash in foreign currency were recovered from them.

The smugglers were arrested during the immigration raid conducted by DB officials at the airport’s immigration zone. Another member of the gang was arrested from a house in the City. The officials recovered 70 gold bars weighing 8 kilograms. In addition, 3.5 million Bangladeshi Taka and 5,000 Saudi Riyal were also seized from them. The DB officials suspect that the members belong to a large smuggling syndicate who is responsible for bringing in contraband gold into Bangladesh.

The details of the smugglers will be announced later during the day.

Two days before, police authorities had arrested 15 Bangladeshi expatriates in possession of 22 gold bars weighing around 2.5 kilograms. In similar incident, 13 other expatriates who arrived from Saudi Arabia were arrested for carrying 3.1 kilograms of illegal gold.

According to sources, the very low gold import duty prevailing in Bangladesh compared to that in India encourages smugglers to import gold into Bangladesh and then smuggle it out to India. BSF officials had seized gold biscuits worth Rs.32 lakhs yesterday at the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.

The National Board of Revenue in Bangladesh has already submitted proposals to the government to increase duty on gold imports in order to prevent smuggling of legally imported gold to neighboring India.