Watch: Indian officials arrest six passengers for smuggling 5.5kg gold in their wigs


Nick Webster
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Eight passengers have been arrested at an airport in India on suspicion of smuggling gold and foreign currency in their wigs.

Customs officials in Chennai found gold paste and cash tightly packed into parcels and concealed in the wigs of the passengers.

Gold and cash were also hidden in socks, underwear and inside the passengers' bodies.

A video was released on social media on Sunday by the Chennai Customs department.

It showed how the men had glued the packages under their false hair.

The gold was valued at about $344,000 (Dh1.26 million) and $33,000 (Dh121,200) was recovered in cash.

Three men from Chennai aged 39, 26 and 42 were arrested on the same flight operated by a UAE-carrier arriving into India on Saturday.

Police said they were alerted as a result of the men’s “suspicious hairstyles”.

Each had gold concealed either under their wigs or hidden inside their person.

Earlier on the same day two men, aged 24 and 26, were arrested as they tried to exit Chennai International Airport. Both men were from the city.

One had attempted to conceal four packets of gold hidden inside underwear and socks to pass to the other man as he exited the arrivals building.

The arrests came 24-hours after customs police intercepted three men from Chennai aged 22, 33 and 35 arriving in a UAE-flagged aircraft from Dubai and Sharjah.

Each had hidden packages of gold paste underneath wigs.

In a separate case, Chennai authorities stopped four passengers from boarding flights bound for Sharjah, as they were also hiding substantial bundles of cash under fake hair.

On removal of the wigs and clothing, police found 67500 Saudi Riyals, US$4750, Dh6500 and 800,000 Bangladesh Takas, about Dh34,700.

Smugglers are looking for increasingly ingenious methods of hiding contraband from Customs officials, as they attempt to export gold from the Gulf to India.

Shoes, fake bottoms and children's toys are only some of the bizarre hiding places criminals have used to smuggle illegal items on to aircraft in recent years.

Bizarre smuggling attempts - in pictures

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4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own

5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed

Ain Dubai in numbers

126: The length in metres of the legs supporting the structure

1 football pitch: The length of each permanent spoke is longer than a professional soccer pitch

16 A380 Airbuses: The equivalent weight of the wheel rim.

9,000 tonnes: The amount of steel used to construct the project.

5 tonnes: The weight of each permanent spoke that is holding the wheel rim in place

192: The amount of cable wires used to create the wheel. They measure a distance of 2,4000km in total, the equivalent of the distance between Dubai and Cairo.

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Biog

Mr Kandhari is legally authorised to conduct marriages in the gurdwara

He has officiated weddings of Sikhs and people of different faiths from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Russia, the US and Canada

Father of two sons, grandfather of six

Plays golf once a week

Enjoys trying new holiday destinations with his wife and family

Walks for an hour every morning

Completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Loyola College, Chennai, India

2019 is a milestone because he completes 50 years in business

 

Western Region Asia Cup T20 Qualifier

Sun Feb 23 – Thu Feb 27, Al Amerat, Oman

The two finalists advance to the Asia qualifier in Malaysia in August

 

Group A

Bahrain, Maldives, Oman, Qatar

 

Group B

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if you go

The flights
Flydubai offers three daily direct flights to Sarajevo and, from June, a daily flight from Thessaloniki from Dubai. A return flight costs from Dhs1,905 including taxes.
The trip 
The Travel Scientists are the organisers of the Balkan Ride and several other rallies around the world. The 2018 running of this particular adventure will take place from August 3-11, once again starting in Sarajevo and ending a week later in Thessaloniki. If you’re driving your own vehicle, then entry start from €880 (Dhs 3,900) per person including all accommodation along the route. Contact the Travel Scientists if you wish to hire one of their vehicles. 

While you're here
What is graphene?

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.

It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.

But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.