Each passenger was carrying gold hidden in bottle caps.

Mumbai, May 10 (Mumbai Mirror): The Airport Intelligence Unit (AIU) arrested 21 people for smuggling in Rs 2 crore worth of gold on Tuesday. The arrest, the biggest ever by the Mumbai AIU, saw 6 kg of gold being seized from the group, hidden in their bottle caps.

According to the AIU, the group was returning from a pilgrimage to Jeddah in a Jet Airways flight on May 8, 2017.

“We stopped them at Customs as they were acting suspicious but despite checking their luggage we didn’t find anything,” said Deputy Commissioner Customs, Pradnyasheel Jumle.

But then the authorities noticed that each of them had water bottles of the same make and with the same water quantity in their luggage. When the officers checked the bottles, they found that all of them had a hidden cavity full of cut pieces of gold.

“We retrieved 112 pieces, weighing 5.6 kg, worth Rs 1.7 crore in the 21bottle cavities,” Jumle told Mirror.

The authorities then seized the gold and arrested the 21 passengers, who are all residents of Tanda village in Ramgarh district of Uttar Pradesh.

“They had been smuggling gold for a while in large groups. They were working as smugglers for a Lucknow based syndicate. We are investigating further as this arrest might help us solve other cases of smuggling as well,” Jumle said.

On the same day, a Sudanese national and a businessman from Nagpada were also intercepted in separate cases of gold smuggling at the Mumbai airport. While the Sudanese national had around 500 grams of gold, the Nagpada-based caterer was carrying close to 2 kg gold. The gold was hidden in their pockets and was seized.

Gold smuggling has risen this year, say officials. Thirty-six people have been arrested since January. Security officials said since the import of gold for domestic consumption had taken a hit, it had resulted in increased smuggling.