8-month pregnant woman among 2 flyers arrested for smuggling gold worth 19cr

Mumbai: Two women from Nairobi were arrested on Monday for smuggling 33 kg of gold bars worth Rs 19 crore. The gold was hidden in their undergarments and baggage, said officials of the Air Intelligence Unit of Customs.
This marks one of the largest gold seizures from air passengers arriving in Mumbai this year, Customs officials said. The two were held separately although both are part of the same gold smuggling syndicate, officials said.
The emerging trend of gold smugglers using foreigner women, to smuggle gold is alarming, said Custom officials.
In the first case, AIU officials questioned passenger Anzal Abdi Kala (26), who walked through the green channel, about carrying any dutiable goods, to which she replied in the negative. Officials, with assistance of women officers, conducted a personal search and discovered 8 yellow metal pieces in her undergarments and a bag containing four pouches with 20 yellow metal pieces wrapped in adhesive tape. Upon unwrapping, they found 28 pieces of gold weighing 11.308 kg, valued at Rs 6.60 crore.
Similarly, woman passenger Saida Hussein (24), who arrived on the same flight, was found with 61 yellow metal pieces cleverly concealed with adhesive tape in her baggage. The total weight of the seized gold is about 21.48 kg, worth Rs 12.54 crore.
Both were booked under various provisions of the Customs Act, produced before the Custom court, and remanded to judicial custody.
During preliminary inquiries both denied the gold belongs to them. Advocate Prabhakar Tripathi for Kala said, “My client is eight months pregnant. Why would she indulge in the wrong thing knowing that she is about to deliver in a month or so. She has been falsely implicated. Saida requested her to carry her baggage and in a bid to help her she was made scapegoat”
Advocate Vijay Adwani for Saida also claimed that his client has been falsely implicated as it is impossible to carry 20 kg of gold hidden on the body.