Three women have been arrested by customs officers at the Katunayake International Airport this morning attempting to smuggle unfinished gold jewelry valued at over Rs 2.6 million to India.
Airport customs seized 6 gold chains and 13 gold bangles, weighing 525 grams in total, estimated to be worth around Rs 2,625,000.
Customs Spokesman Leslie Gamini stated that the suspects had attempted to board Mumbai-bound Jet Airways flight (9w255) at 3.30am today.
Investigations are being carried out by airport customs, he said.
The hike in import duty on gold by the Indian Government has led to a spurt in smuggling of gold into the country from Sri Lanka and other neighbouring states like Bangladesh, Myanmar.
Between April to September alone, India’s customs officials seized nearly double the amount of smuggled gold it nabbed in all of 2012.
“Though the quantum of seizures has increased, in our opinion it reflects only 1 to 2 per cent of total smuggling,” a revenue intelligence officer in Mumbai was quoted as saying by Reuters.
“Dubai is still the number one place from where gold gets in and Singapore is slowly emerging. Sri Lanka has become a staging point.”
Last week, Sri Lanka limited the amount of jewellery its residents can take out of the country and it will try to monitor whether they bring it back.
In late November, 56 Sri Lankans were held in Kochi after they were found with nearly 12 kg of gold. Some of them had travelled to Kochi six times last month.
Sri Lanka, which raised taxes on gold imports from June to November due to rising smuggling to India, last week said female residents could only fly out with 120 grams of jewellery, the equivalent of about 28 wedding bands. Men are allowed a third of that.
Customs officials may allow exceptions but will monitor if passengers bring back the same amount of gold they left with.
“In the last three to four months, we have seen several cases of gold smuggling from Sri Lanka to India through cities such as Mumbai, Kochi and Chennai,” Leslie Gamini, a spokesman for Sri Lankan customs, told Reuters.
“It is a very difficult task. But we have to implement it. We are in the process of developing guidelines on how to implement this.”
