A suspected smuggler has been caught with 95 grams of gold hidden in his mouth, in the form of dentures and a chain.
Customs officers in Delhi plucked them from his mouth shortly after he arrived from Dubai.
The man was one of two Uzbekistan nationals detained on August 28 by the Customs Air Intelligence Unit at Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Officers felt they looked suspicious as the men entered the ‘nothing to declare’ green channel in arrivals.
They carried out an oral cavity search and found the gold worth around $5,500 (Dh20,200).
On the same night, a second flight from Dubai carried two other passengers allegedly hoping to dodge customs charges and taxes on gold as they entered India through Delhi's international airport.
The customs department profiles passengers coming into the country through its Advance Passenger Information System (Apis) to identify trafficking and terrorism threats.
Officials noticed two Indian passengers of interest on FlyDubai flight FZ431 arriving in Delhi from Dubai on August 28.
The two men, from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, had their luggage checked as they entered via the airport’s green channel in arrivals.
An x-ray found nothing suspicious. But further examination by officers revealed a brown paste containing 560g of gold worth $32,200 (Dh118,200) concealed inside one of the passengers' shirt collar and cuffs. The men were then arrested.
On September 9, two men were stopped as they entered the airport as intelligence alerted officers to hidden gold in their underwear. Both passengers were arrested for trying to smuggle 1,369g of gold hidden in brown paste worth around $79,000 (Dh290,000).
Dubai to India is a common route for gold smugglers because of the booming UAE market for precious metals.
They are often hoping to avoid India’s luxury tax, which must be paid on arrival and is often more than 10 per cent of the total value of the gold.
India’s Apis system was extended across the country by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2011, after successful trials by customs authorities at six airports — Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Delhi and Mumbai.
The system profiles passengers travelling to India from high-risk areas to collate a database for risk assessment purposes. It aims to identify those carrying fake currency, sensitive items or under-invoiced goods for duty-evasion.
Most brazen smuggling attempts - in pictures
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US Customs arrested this Fly Jamaica Airways cabin crew attendant, who was found to have 4kg of cocaine strapped to his legs and concealed under tights and trousers. The haul at New York's JFK Airport would have been worth about $160,000 on the street. Photo: US Customs and Border Protection -
Police in Bogata, Colombia arrested this Canadian woman for trying to smuggle 2kg of cocaine on to a Canada-bound flight in September, 2013. The woman pretended to be pregnant and hid the drugs in a latex belly. AFP -
This spectacularly conspicuous attempt to smuggle €30,000 of cocaine ended in arrest for a Colombian passenger in July, 2019. The man, 65, concealed one kilo of the illicit powder by gluing it to his head. He was caught when police noticed the height of his black toupee, when his flight from Bogota landed in Barcelona. Photo: Policia Nacional -
Australian customs officers foiled this attempt to smuggle the party drug ecstasy into the country, concealed in a Mr Potato Head toy. Officers at Sydney International Mail Centre cracked open the Toy Story figurine and found 293g of the drug in October, 2007. AFP -
Portuguese police released this image of multicoloured swim trunks with two brown rubber bags — supposed to look like buttocks — attached. The passenger who was wearing them was caught at the airport in Lisbon, off a flight from Belem in northern Brazil in February 2018. The fake buttocks contained enough cocaine for 5,000 doses. Photo: Portuguese National Police -
Guatemalan smugglers were found to have scooped out the cream filling of dozens of vanilla wafers and replaced it with wraps of cocaine. US Customs and Border Protection arrested the Guatemalan passenger carrying them at George Bush Airport in Houston in April 2015. The nearly 2 kilos of cocaine would have a street value of more than $60,000. AP -
Few airports in the world will let you through security without removing your shoes, due to the threat from terrorism and to tackle drug smuggling. Australian Customs discovered nearly half a kilo of heroin in the hollowed out soles of these shoes. AFP -
Customs officers at Dubai's main airport foiled 155 attempts to smuggle 'talismans and black magic items', related to witchcraft and sorcery, in 2015. Officers said criminals take advantage of often vulnerable people with superstitions. Photo: Dubai Customs -
In August 2019, 755kg of methamphetamine was found hidden under frozen cow hide from Mexico. The crystal meth was wrapped in aluminium foil and sandwiched among 18 pallets of hide that arrived in Sydney aboard a shipping container marked 'Salty Bovine Skin'. AFP -
Crystal meth wraps are removed from inside hollowed out hardwood flooring at a warehouse in near Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in April, 2017. The haul had been shipped from China and had a street value of $681m. AFP -
London-based seafood salesman Gilbert Khoo was sentenced to jail at a British court in March, 2020 for smuggling live 'glass eels' to Hong Kong. He was caught with 200kg and the total haul between 2015 and 2017 was worth about $69m. Photo: National Crime Agency -
Khoo, pictured holding two pieces of gold, was arrested after Border Force officers seized a consignment at Heathrow Airport. Photo: National Crime Agency -
Dubai Police released this image of drugs in a hollowed out book. It was part of a consignment of two tonnes of drugs of various types. A multinational police operation tackled criminal activities related to drug smuggling and trafficking in Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Austria in November 2017. Photo: Dubai Police -
A passenger tried to smuggle a whole roasted hog from Peru to Atlanta in November, 2016, for Thanksgiving. US Customs staff seized the hidden pig, which is banned by laws designed to prevent foot and mouth disease and swine fever. Photo: US Customs and Border Protection -
Drugs are hidden inside a microwave as seizures are displayed at Dubai Airport in July 2019. Chris Whiteoak / The National -
One of the largest drug busts in Dubai's history was made at Jebel Ali Port in May 2019. Sniffer dogs alerted officers to a shipment that was found to contain 5.7 million Captagon pills. Photo: Dubai Police -
Captagon is a type of amphetamine originally used for attention deficit disorders, but was banned in the 1980s due to its highly addictive nature. Smugglers in Syria have thrived during the chaos of the war there, and many shipments have been traced to the Arab state. Photo: Dubai Police
