Bengaluru: An aircraft maintenance technician working with Jet Airways was nabbed by sleuths of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence at the Mangalore International Airport on Tuesday for his involvement in a gold smuggling racket.
Authorities said they had received specific inputs that smugglers were concealing gold bars in aircraft toilets to bring them from Gulf countries to Mangalore.
The accused, Lalbin Jeen, would board the earmarked plane after it landed on the pretext of some maintenance work and retrieve the gold bars. DRI officials said he would then hand them over to “agents of smugglers at some designated place in the city.”
Based on these intelligence reports, the sleuths mounted surveillance on the accused and kept tabs on his movement on Tuesday. The officers intercepted him once he got down from a Jet Airways flight that had arrived from Dubai. He was caught with two packets of gold weighing roughly 1166.5 gram, with a market value of Rs 34.40 lakh, authorities said.
During interrogation, he told the sleuths that he was supposed to hand over the gold to an agent at the city centre mall in the evening and his commission was fixed at Rs 20,000. He has been charged under provisions of the Customs Act, 1962. He was as produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mangalore, and was remanded to judicial custody.
Authorities said that the case has been transferred to law enforcement agencies and a full-fledged investigation is underway to nab the others involved based on the leads provided by Jeen. Jet Airways is fully cooperating with the probe, said officials.
Jet Airways said it has suspended Jeen, pending an inquiry, and would take further action as per company policy. “Jet Airways has a strict employee Code of Conduct, based on the values and ethos of the airline. The airline has zero tolerance towards any action of its employees wherein integrity has been compromised leading to a loss of confidence,” a company spokesperson said.
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