A 19-year-old woman was detained at the airport in Kerala with 1.8 kilograms of gold hidden in her undergarments

A 19-year-old woman was detained by the Kerala Police on Monday for smuggling gold outside the Kozhikode airport.

The suspect, Shahla, a Kasaragod district native, had flown into Kozhikode International Airport from Dubai.

She had avoided detection by customs officials while carrying the stolen riches.

Police waited outside the airport

Shahla was met at the airport by a Kerala Police squad led by Malappuram Superintendent of Police (SP) Suchith Das, who had received precise information regarding her smuggling gold. Shahla was then taken to jail.

It’s thought that a competing gang may have given the cops the information.

Shahla first denied being a gold courier while in police detention and argued that she should be released.

Even looking through her bags proved to be fruitless.

1 crore rupees worth of gold concealed as paste

The police persisted though, and after a thorough body search, they discovered three packages attached to her undergarment that contained 1,884 grammes of paste-form gold valued Rs 1 crore. Shahla, according to the authorities, was a novice gold smuggler.

According to local media sources, Shahla, a married woman, travelled to Dubai last week to see her husband and take part in an interview. She allegedly received the gold from a “buddy” and received Rs 60,000 in exchange for acting as a transporter.

The Kerala Police detained this gold smuggler on their 87th try from outside the Kozhikode airport.

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The majority of India’s gold smuggling occurs in Kerala.

In Kerala’s four international airports, gold smuggling has been rife.

Pankaj Chaudhary, a minister of state for finance, stated in front of the Parliament earlier this month that Kerala had the most incidents of gold seizures by enforcement authorities in November, which reached a three-year high of 3,083 kg.

The amount of gold taken nationwide has increased this year compared to the 2,383 kg seized in 2021 and the 2,154 kg seized in 2020. 3,673 kg of gold were taken in 2019, and 3,588 incidents resulted in the seizure of 3,083.61 kg of gold in 2022 (up to November).

From 587 kilogrammes in 2021 and 406 kg in 2020, 690 kg of yellow gold were confiscated in 948 incidents in Kerala in 2022. 725 kilogrammes were seized in 2019.

Apart from Kerala, states with significant gold seizures this year until November 2022 are West Bengal (440 kg in 809 instances), Tamil Nadu (440 kg in 484 cases), and Maharashtra (474 kg in 484 cases) (369 kg in 214 cases).