MULTAN City News

Two women held at airport as bid to smuggle gold foiled

From Our Correspondent

MULTAN: The Regional Customs Collectorate arrested two women at the airport and foiled a bid to smuggle 14kg gold to Dubai on Thursday.

Addressing a press conference here, Collector Customs Sarfraz Warriach said that two passengers - Sumaira Asif of Multan and Haleema Riaz of Lahore - were boarding a flight for Dubai when the Customs officials and the Airport Security Force personnel arrested them on suspicion. He said that the accused women were cleared from all the counters. He said that the officials ignored arms’ search in the first attempt. The Customs officials again frisked them and finally saw that they were wearing heavy gold bangles hidden under clothes, he added. He said that the laboratory test of gold had established that bangles were made of 24-Qirat gold weighing 24kg and amounted to Rs 60.4 million. The collector said that the accused women were part of an organised gang of gold smugglers as one accused belonged to Lahore and the other belonged to Multan.

When the collector was asked whether the accused women were owner or just gold carriers, he said that investigation was under way.