Mumbai: Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) sleuths of the Mumbai airport customs busted an all-women gang and for the first time managed to nab the carrier, receiver and an airport insider who was helping smuggling out gold bars worth Rs 24 lakh on Wednesday.
The team working on specific information was monitoring the activity of Pooja Sonwalkar, a staffer of ground handling firm Celebi Nas for the last few weeks. At 4.50 am on Wednesday, the officials noticed Rubina Salim, a passenger arriving from Kuwait via Kuwait Airways flight KU 301, hand over a package to Sonwalkar, who was on ground handling duty. The gold was handed over to Salim by an unidentified person in Kuwait."An examination of the package after questioning revealed 9 gold bars of 10 tolas each weighing a little over 1 kg in weight," a customs official said. Salim, a housewife living in Veraval in Gujarat, gave away details of her crime immediately on being intercepted.
While Salim has been caught for the first time she admitted to having worked as a carrier and smuggled gold three times earlier this year. Sonwalkar admitted having cleared 20 different consignments of at least 17-18 kg of gold worth Rs 4.2 crore approximately from various carriers.
27/11/14 Mumbai Mirror
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The team working on specific information was monitoring the activity of Pooja Sonwalkar, a staffer of ground handling firm Celebi Nas for the last few weeks. At 4.50 am on Wednesday, the officials noticed Rubina Salim, a passenger arriving from Kuwait via Kuwait Airways flight KU 301, hand over a package to Sonwalkar, who was on ground handling duty. The gold was handed over to Salim by an unidentified person in Kuwait."An examination of the package after questioning revealed 9 gold bars of 10 tolas each weighing a little over 1 kg in weight," a customs official said. Salim, a housewife living in Veraval in Gujarat, gave away details of her crime immediately on being intercepted.
While Salim has been caught for the first time she admitted to having worked as a carrier and smuggled gold three times earlier this year. Sonwalkar admitted having cleared 20 different consignments of at least 17-18 kg of gold worth Rs 4.2 crore approximately from various carriers.
27/11/14 Mumbai Mirror
