Customs Commissioner (Preventive) Sumit Kumar said that deception of a twin nature had happened in the seizure of 30 kg gold worth Rs 15-16 crore in Thiruvananthapuram International Airport on July 5.
One, he said the gold was smuggled in as diplomatic cargo. Two, it was concealed inside household items in such a way that it could not be detected by ordinary detection methods used in airports.
"A normal scan would not have revealed the gold. We had to cut through," the Customs Commissioner told Onmanorama.
He also said it was for the first time that gold was seen concealed in diplomatic pouches. He hinted that it was the discrepancy in the 'bill of entry', a list of items that came as diplomatic luggage, that first induced suspicion in customs officials. "There were items that were not accounted for in the list," he said.
Though the Commissioner was tight-lipped on the accused, a top Customs official in Thiruvananthapuram said the "aggression" shown by the person who came to collect the goods at the airport, after the cargo was held up, heightened suspicions.
The man who waved apparently bonafide Consulate papers was later found to be a former employee (the Consulate's public relations officer) of the UAE Consulate. He is now being interrogated at the Customs office in Kochi.
There were tip-offs, too. "We followed up on actionable information," Sumit Kumar sad.
The Commissioner termed the smuggling operation a "professional job, an organised syndicate action".
He said even the packaging, the concealment of the gold within the sanitary-ware items like pipes, was a costly, elaborate process. It is not as straightforward as filling the hollows of plumbing materials with molten gold. A thin but strong mould has to be first created into which the molten gold has to be poured. Once the gold solidifies, the mould is inserted into the hollow pipes.
"This process of concealment alone would have cost them over Rs 1 crore," the Commissioner said.
He said the UAE Consulate was cooperating with the investigation. "There is nothing that can compel them to talk with us. We can do nothing if they refused to cooperate with us. But we are glad they are highly cooperative," the Commissioner said.
It is also known that the the Consulate official to whom the luggage was addressed has denied knowledge of such a despatch. "We have taken his words at face value but we will be talking to officers in the Consulate," he said.
The UAE Consulate has also officially said the UAE Embassy or its diplomats had no role in the case. According to the Embassy, a private official had exploited the diplomatic immunity. "This should never have happened and the Embassy strongly condemns the incident," it said.
The Commissioner said the probe was still in a preliminary stage and was attempting to trace back the consignment to the sender. "If this has been happening for some time, the racket has to be exposed for its sets a dangerous precedent," the Commissioner sad.