Customs officials recovered 1.36kg of gold paste at Dhaka airport.
Representational Image. Illustration: TBS
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Representational Image. Illustration: TBS
A Dhaka court has placed a man on a five-day remand after he was arrested with gold paste worth Tk2.12 crore allegedly concealed in his rectum at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Hasan Shahadat passed the order today (2 November) following a hearing.
Earlier, Sub-Inspector Md Habibul Hasib of Airport Police Station, the investigation officer in the case, produced Mohammad Minhaj, 22, before the court and sought a 10-day remand for questioning.
The court granted five days of remand, Sub-Inspector Abu Bakkar of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Prosecution Division confirmed.
According to the remand application, Minhaj provided inconsistent information during preliminary questioning and withheld details about his alleged involvement in a gold-smuggling syndicate.
Investigators suspect he is an active member of an international gold-smuggling network. They said further interrogation was necessary to identify other members, trace the alleged mastermind and establish the sources of the smuggled gold and the financial transactions involved.
According to the case statement, Minhaj had booked a ticket to Abu Dhabi via Chattogram on Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight BG-127 on 1 November.
The Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate received confidential information that he had concealed gold in his rectum.
Acting on the information, customs intelligence officials detained him for questioning around 7:20pm at the holding lounge near Departure Boarding Bridge C-4 at the airport.
He was later taken to a clinic in Uttara for further examination, where an X-ray confirmed the presence of gold paste in his rectum.
Three oval-shaped portions of gold paste, each weighing 454 grammes, were subsequently recovered from inside his underwear, bringing the total weight to 1,362 grammes.
A jewellery trader examined the material and certified it as 24-carat gold paste.
After refining, the recovered paste is expected to yield approximately 1,260 grammes of gold, with an estimated market value of Tk2 crore 12 lakh 94 thousand.
Assistant Revenue Officer Md Safayet Ullah Bhuiyan of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Circle filed the case with Airport Police Station under the Special Powers Act.
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