Gold Smuggled by Visually Impaired Man Worth 3.5 Crore, Arrested

A visually impaired man was found smuggling gold in his shirt as he arrived from Dubai. The individual, unidentified was held at Kempegowda International Airport and had concealed close to 3.44 crore of gold in him. The arrest came after the day Ranya Rao was arrested for Smuggling gold to India. Customs worked after a tip and nabbed the individual soon after he landed at Bangalore airport.

In a post, the customs officials claimed “Upon inspection, 3,995.22 grams of gold worth ₹3,44,38,796, concealed under his shirt, was seized, and a smuggling case was registered.” just a day before, popular movie actress Ranya Rao was arrested allegedly because of smuggling gold from Dubai worth 12 crores and was held at arrival at Bangalore airport.

The smuggling case of Ranya Rao was one of the biggest busts at Bangalore airport to date. Rao was arrested and presented to the court which ordered remanded her for judicial custody for three days. According to sources, Ranya traveled close to 27 times in the past 6 months. Moreover, the investigators also believe that she was a part of a larger syndicate that smuggled gold. Moreover, she would get somewhere between 4 lakhs to 5 lakhs on every KG of gold she smuggled.

Bangalore has ensured strict security, especially for people who have a strong background as Ranya has used her father's name multiple times to get easy access to the flights through the VIP gates. This helped in easy transfers with minimal baggage verification and security checks.

The Karnataka Government also ensured that the privilege will only be given to the bureaucrats and will not be extended to the family members since this has led to challenges in investigations of the higher officials. The protocol comes directly from the Airport Authority of India as this will help minimize the risk of smuggling cases.

After the case, ED raided many places in Karnataka as they believed that some hideouts around the city were linked to the smuggling community. A few days before Ranya Rao was arrested, two individuals were caught at Mumbai International Airport for smuggling 21.8 KG of gold.

"The above two cases detected in quick succession involving passengers making trips from Dubai, the attempted smuggling of large quantities of gold into India, and the high frequency of these visits involving Indian and foreign national points to a possible nexus with coordinated smuggling syndicate, possibly operating from Dubai (UAE). his may have larger national and international ramifications. The possibility of the involvement of unknown public servants of the Govt. of India and unknown others, with such coordinated network, needs to be investigated," claimed the complaint made by Abhishek Chandragupta.