Indian authorities on Monday intercepted a man smuggling nearly a kilogram of gold paste inside his body at a domestic airport in the northeastern state of Manipur.
Mohammed Shereef alleged that he merely carried the gold and did not own it, an officer told The Independent.
Mr Shereef was travelling from the Imphal airport to the country’s capital New Delhi, when an official with India’s Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) found the presence of metal in his body while frisking him during the pre-embarkation security check.
The man was taken to a medical examination room after initial interrogation. An X-ray of his abdomen showed that he was concealing “some metallic items in a body cavity.”
The CISF said in a press statement that Mr Shereef is a resident of Kozhikode in the southern state of Kerala.
He allegedly confessed to carrying gold in the form of paste inside his rectum, after which the agency recovered four packets of yellow metal paste that weighed about 909.68g. Its value is around Rs 4.2mn (approximately £41,800), the CISF said.
The CISF handed Mr Shereef over to the airport customs department of Imphal for further interrogation. He remained in their custody for 24 hours and was released on bail on Tuesday.
The accused was only a carrier of the gold paste and not its owner, an officer at the Imphal airport customs department said on condition of anonymity. Though the department is investigating his role, Mr Shereef, who ran a clothing business, has not been arrested in any such cases in the state in the past, the officer said.
