The Central Industrial Security Force, in charge of airport safety, has seized gold worth more than Rs 445 crore and silver worth over Rs 2.4 crore being transported illegally by passengers at various airports since demonetization. Apart from this, cash Rs 87.1765 crore was also recovered, CISF said on Thursday.

A senior officer said that following demonetization and acting on an advisory from the Ministry of Finance, the CISF had issued directions to all its units at 59 airports to keep a close watch on movements of high volume of cash and gold in hand baggage. It was also directed to inform the Air Intelligence Unit of Income Tax Department of the respective airports for further action.

Hemendra Singh, Assistant Inspector General and the Public Relations Officer, CISF, said that between November 8, 2016 and November 7, 2017, the CISF has recovered 1491.504 kg of gold, 577.637 kg of silver, and cash worth Rs 87.1765 crore.

"During this period, the airports that witnessed highest gold recovery were Jaipur with 203.544 kg and Mumbai with 342.989 kg, while Delhi topped with 498.356 kg. Jaipur, however, saw the highest recovery of silver at 266.362 kg, followed by Ahmadabad with 103.704 kg and Delhi at 74.55 kg," Singh said.

Mumbai saw the most cash, Rs 33.29 crore, being recovered. Interestingly, Imphal witnessed recovery of the second highest amount of cash at Rs 16.60 crore, while Delhi saw only Rs 6.25 crore.

The data showed that a major chunk of Rs 71.48 crore of cash was recovered within less than two months after demonetization was announced on November 8 last year. Only Rs 15.6871 crore was recovered in 2017 up to November 7.

Also, no airport witnessed 'no recovery', even though Trivandrum, Madurai, Nagpur, Patna, Jodhpur and Bhavnagar saw minimal recoveries in that period.

A senior officer said that the airports which lie in states sharing international boundaries or those with sea route connectivity witnessed a large number of recoveries.

"Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Imphal, Jaipur saw major recoveries. These states either touch with international boundaries or have sea routes. There is a possibility of easy cross border movement from these location, which might have been one of the reasons of airports here seeing major portion of total recovery," the officer said.

RECOVERY