Customs officials at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here have seized 115 smuggled gold bars weighing 3.5 kg from an American national of Indian origin, who allegedly concealed the contraband in a specially designed belt, officials said on Saturday.
According to an official statement, senior Customs officials tracking contraband flow said the major seizure “directly correlates” with a rise in gold smuggling attempts observed over the past week after the increase in Customs duty on gold from 6 per cent to 15 per cent altered the illicit market dynamics.
“With the margin of profit per kilogram skyrocketing, international syndicates appear to have shown heightened desperation by deploying increasingly complex concealment methods,” the statement said.
Acting on intelligence inputs developed through risk-based passenger profiling, officers of the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) intercepted the passenger at the international arrival terminal after he landed here from San Francisco on May 15 and allegedly attempted to clear the green channel covertly, the statement said.
During a search, the officers found 115 gold bars concealed in the inner pockets of the passenger's trousers, hidden inside a specially designed belt, it said.
The seized gold bars were of 24-karat purity (999.9) and weighed 3,565 grams in total.
Customs officials said the gold was being smuggled into India as contraband and was seized under Section 110 of the Customs Act, 1962.
The passenger has been arrested under Section 104 of the Customs Act, the statement said.
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Published on May 16, 2026