Airport custom officials of Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong city detained a person carrying 146 gold bars weighing in at 17kgs and 400gm of gold ornaments Tuesday.
The detainee, Mir Muhammad Shahnewaj Murshed, 35, from Boalkhali upazila, Chittagong, flew in from Dubai on an Oman Airways flight at around 9:30am, said Md Moinuddin, assistant commissioner of the airport immigration police.
After landing in Chittagong, Murshed made a suspicious move, when he decided to travel to Dhaka through United
Airways, he said. Later, when the authorities searched his bag, they found gold bars and gold ornaments, added the AC.
According to the existing law, a person can carry a maximum of 200gms of gold from abroad, after paying the necessary duty fare at the airport. However, Murshed was trying to travel to Dhaka airport with gold bars that violated the law, said airport customs sources.
In the primary interrogation, Murshed told police that a person named Shafiq in Dubai offered him Tk50,000 to hand over the bars to another person at Dhaka airport but Murshed could not name the receiver, said the AC.
Murshed told the reporters that he had been in Dubai for the past decade and that he came into the country 10 to 12 times in 2013. However, it was for the first time he carried gold bars in exchange for money.
Airport customs seized the gold bars and the ornaments while Murshed was handed over to the Patenga police station, said Sushanta Paul, assistant commissioner of airport customs, adding that a case was lodged with Patenga police station.
The seized gold was worth Tk80m, added the customs official.
