A JET Airways crew member was held by Customs early Thursday morning for attempting to smuggle 11 kg gold worth Rs 27 lakh.

This is the second time, this year, that a crew member of the airline has been apprehended for smuggling gold.

According to Mumbai Customs, the crew member, aged 24, was one of the two flight attendants onboard Jet Airways flight 9W-543 that arrived in Mumbai from Dubai, to be questioned.

“Through profiling on-board the aircraft and after it landed, we became suspicious of the two male flight attendants. After the flight landed, we took them aside for a search,” said an official from the Customs’ Air Intelligence Unit.

The crew member was asked to wait in a corridor and his colleague was searched inside by Customs. “He was seated on a sofa and hid the gold in a corner of the sofa. He had only a few seconds to do it before being called inside,” said the Customs officer.

The duo were allowed to leave after no gold was found on their person or in their luggage and would have got away, the officer said, but a Customs sepoy noticed a package on the sofa after left by the crew member.

“He saw a light brown package placed in a corner of the sofa. He lifted it and found it heavy and suspected that it might contain gold. So he brought it into the office where we opened the package and reviewed the CCTV footage of the corridor,” said a senior Customs officer. He was called back to the Customs office at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and allegedly confessed after being confronted with the package and the CCTV footage.

“He has been employed with Jet Airways for the past four years and claimed that this was his first attempt to smuggle gold. We have taken him into custody and are investigating all his travels,” said the officer.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com

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