Two Cleaners Arrested at Chennai Airport with 1.64 Kg of Gold Hidden in Shoes

Customs officials at Chennai airport have seized 1.64 kg of gold valued at Rs 2.37 crore from two cleaning staff members who allegedly attempted to smuggle the contraband out of the facility inside their shoes, officials confirmed on Tuesday.

Acting on specific intelligence inputs, officers from the Air Intelligence Unit intercepted the two workers who had been deployed to clean a commercial aircraft that arrived from Dubai on August 30.

Upon conducting a search of the suspects, customs officials discovered packets concealed inside the shoes of both individuals. The packets were tightly wrapped in black adhesive tape and contained a yellow-coloured paste.

Authorities subsequently extracted, melted, and processed the material, retrieving a total of 1,640 grams of gold in ingot form. A government-approved gold assayer examined the recovered metal and certified it to be 24-karat pure gold.

According to sources, the smuggling attempt appears to have been part of an organized and pre-planned operation. An unidentified individual had allegedly provided information to the two cleaners in advance, directing them to retrieve the package from inside the aircraft during their routine cleaning duties.

Customs authorities confiscated the entire quantity of gold, and both cleaning crew members were taken into custody and arrested under the provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.