Passenger smuggling gold in button form held at Imphal

Imphal April 2 (IANS) A passenger seeking to smuggling an amount of gold in the form of buttons was caught at Imphal Airport an CISF official said on Monday.

Pradeep Kumar a resident of Uttar Pradesh s Gorakhpur was caught on Sunday afternoon during pre-embarkation security check as he was going to board an Indigo flight to Kolkata said Central Industrial Security Force s (CISF) Assistant Inspector General Hemendra Singh.

Each button was 1.5 gram gold coated with silver colour and a total of 120 buttons comprising 180 grams of the precious metal worth Rs 5 lakh approximately were recovered from him he said adding that the new modus operandi was adopted to avoid detection of gold during screening of baggage.

Kumar was later handed over to customs official in Imphal for further legal action.

--IANS
rak/vd