Gold in underwear: Two women held at Coimbatore airport for concealing gold worth Rs 62 lakh in sanitary pads

Coimbatore: Sleuths of the customs department, on Wednesday, detained two women at Coimbatore International Airport after they were caught with 1.1kg gold worth Rs 62 lakh hidden in the underwears they were wearing.

The two women, identified as Deivani Radhakrishnana and Vasanthi Ramaswamy, landed in Coimbatore from Sharjah in an Air Arabia flight at 3:30 am. Acting on a tip-off, the customs officials checked them using a metal detector and found that they were hiding gold in paste form inside the sanitary napkins they were wearing. They were immediately taken into custody.

"They had concealed gold in paste form inside the sanitary pads they were wearing. We extracted 1,195.6gm gold worth Rs 62.46 lakh," The Times of India quoted the customs department as saying.

Gold seized from 5 other passengers

Radhakrishnana is from Chennai while Ramaswamy is a Pudukottai. Besides the duo, five men, who landed in the city in the same flight, were also caught with gold, liquor and cigarettes worth Rs 46 lakh. Two of them are from Chennai, two from Pattinam and one from Illayangudi, TOI reported.

Kerala gold smuggling case

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a sessions court in Kochi extended the Enforcement Directorate's custody of M Sivasankar, former principal secretary of the Kerala Chief Minister's Office, by one day in connection with a case related to the smuggling of gold into the state through diplomatic channels.

The ED had taken Sivasankar into custody on October 28 30 kg gold worth Rs 14.82 crores, smuggled in a diplomatic cargo, was busted by the Customs in Thiruvananthapuram. The ED, during the hearing, told the court that Sivasankar had asked officials to clear some diplomatic baggage without checking by authorities.