Customs officials yesterday seized seven kgs of gold when a Biman Bangladesh Airlines employee was trying to take it out of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport premises in a microbus.

Md Bilal, a Biman employee and driver of the vehicle, was detained, said Othello Chowdhury, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Customs House.

Acting on a tip-off, the officials intercepted the microbus around 2:00pm as it was about to cross the hangar gate of the airport and recovered 60 gold bars wrapped in scotch tape from inside the driver's door, he said.

The gold recovered weighed seven kgs and was worth Tk 3.5 crore, he added.

During primary interrogation, Bilal told the Customs officials that another Biman employee called Amjad had given him the gold bars to transport them out of the airport.

Amjad was supposed to collect the gold once it was transported outside the airport. He went into hiding following the seizure. 

A case is being filed.

The customs official also said they had intelligence prior to this incident that the hangar gate is being used to smuggle gold out of the airport.

“Following the recovery, it has been proven correct,” he said adding that setting up a vehicle scanner at the mouth of the hangar gate is very crucial to stop such incidents. 

The hangar gate is usually used for vehicular movement for transporting perishable goods and bodies on and off the aircraft that is kept in the hangar. It can also be used for emergency services.

Customs House and different law enforcement agency members are investigating to find and bring to book the culprits behind the smuggling racket.