Customs officials nab man for smuggling gold bars at Chennai airport

Customs department sleuths seized gold bars worth Rs 62 lakh allegedly smuggled in a flight that arrived from Riyadh here recently, officials said Friday.

Acting on a tip, the officials questioned an airport handling staff member Mohammed Azam following the arrival of the Saudi Arabian flight on December 20, a release said. On frisking Azam, a customer agent in the Air India Air Transport Services Ltd, a firm providing customer services for Air India, the officials found mobile back cover packets that were "unusually heavy."

On cutting open the packets, officials found three gold cut bars with foreign markings and weighing 1.9 kg, the release added.