New Delhi: Gold flush is having its round in the toilets of the Terminal 3 Airport of IGIA (Indira Gandhi International Airport). In the past two months, the security agencies have found out gold worth in crores.  

The security agency CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) which handles the responsibility of security at IGIA has recovered 6 kg gold worth more than Rs 1.75 crore in this period, all from the Terminal 3 toilets.

The toilets inside the terminal are being used freely by the inbound smugglers. It's been a place where they leave gold and their accomplice pick it afterwards; who is almost an airport employee. 

Every kg of gold smuggled in nets costs almost around 4 lakh. The situation is so bad that the CISF, Customs and Intelligence have had to depute their officials to keep an eye of the happenings going around the toilets. 

To have a vigil eye over the movements of the passengers closed circuits have been repositioned so that the area of the bathroom could be cover well.

Moreover to get the possible images of the wrongdoers the CISF has changed their focus.

They have deputed two security men to monitor the bathroom area at any given time.

To catch the culprit red handed the CISF has deployed several CISF staffs in uniform as well as in civil dress at nearby areas of the toilets. The passengers who enter the toilet just after entering the airport premises, especially those who are coming from West Asia are being strictly checked.  Even the CISF has made proper arrangements and tighten the security for the airport staffs as well.

Our main concern is to give proper security to the Delhi Airport, said CISF Public Relations Officer Hemendra Singh.

To do proper surveillance CISF officer frisks the visitors at the IGIA airport in New Delhi and the heightened surveillance has began to yield results and gold.

According to the senior CISF official, they have been noticing that toilets of Terminal 3 are becoming a meeting-cum-transit point for gold smugglers. Several staffs of the airport, including the cleaners and loaders have been found to be involved in the racket. It's been easy for them to keep toilet as the exchange point as there is no CCTV installed inside, senior official added further. 

Such crimes are taking its roots as it was only last week when the CISF personnel found a mobile phone left in a toilet. When they try to turn it on, they found the power button to be very hard and the device was scanned they discovered a gold biscuit worth Rs 40 lakh.

Later the analysis of CCTV footage helped to pinpoint the person responsible. Other toilet-friendly means used by the new gold smugglers to dump their contraband are like paper wrappings and empty cigarette packets.

The basic modus operandi goes like this: "A passenger, who enters Delhi airport with gold, visits a predefined toilet of the airport, where they can hide packets of gold in dustbin or any other area of toilet. Later the airport staffer (partner in crime) knows where it is and helps to pick it up for the planned delivery outside the airport area."

Recently, staffer of a private ground handling company was arrested, who yielded 1.2kg of gold. The surveillance staff of the CISF noticed Chandan Kumar, a loader of the private company, wandering around skeptically at the international arrival pier of Terminal 3 in the early hours of the day.

He was also seen interacting with a passenger who had just arrived from Bahrain. Both of them walked into a bathroom and moved together while continuing their conversation.

When the CISF personnel followed the passenger he recovered around 1.2kg of gold from Chandan.

As per the rules, if a person does not declare gold on arrival in India, he or she can be arrested, depending on the value of the gold they are carrying.

At present, any person caught with gold valued at less than Rs 20 lakh is not arrested but bringing in the undeclared gold worth more than Rs 20 lakh is considered an offence under Section 135 of the Customs Act.

Such cases are investigated by customs and the accused is produced in the court of the Magistrate (Economic Offences).  Moreover, the conviction results in imprisonment for a year or less, too.  If the crime is repeated then the offenders face imprisonment that can extend to seven years.

The threefold increase in the import duty on gold has resulted in its smuggling going up 400 per cent as per the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence official. 

Almost 700kg of gold is smuggled into India every day.