Gold, mobiles and e-cigarettes worth Rs 28 lakh seized at Chennai airport

Chennai: Customs officials at the Chennai International Airport seized e-cigarettes among other valuables including gold and iPhone. This comes a few days after the Centre banned e-cigarettes.

The Twitter handle of the Chennai Customs posted, “On 22.09.2019 2 pax arrived from Hong Kong by TG337. 164-gramme gold bits, 89 e-cigarettes, 74 e-cigarette cartridges, three iPads, and 19 iPhones worth Rs 28.5 lakhs, concealed in their pocket and luggage was recovered and seized.”

The e-cigarettes and its cartridges are estimated to be valued at Rs 1.10 lakh; apple devices Rs 21.2 lakh; and the gold is worth Rs 6.2 lakh. These items were confiscated from Chennai residents Abbasali Syed Ebrahim (43) and Mohamed Ribai (41), who arrived here from Hong Kong via Bangkok in a Thai Airways flight.

This is the second incident in two days. On September 20, officials seized supplements and cigarettes worth Rs 34 lakh here. The officials had also stopped a smuggling case involving two gold bars weighing 100 grammes each, of 24 K purity, worth Rs 7.8 lakh. Before this, on August 24, they had caught three cases of gold smuggling, and one case of trafficking of saffron, cigarettes, mobile phones and watches worth Rs 52.5 lakh.