Three held at Delhi’s IGI Airport for trying to smuggle micro SD cards worth crores of rupees; probe by Customs officials underway

New Delhi: Three people have been apprehended by CISF personnel at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) for allegedly trying to smuggle in about a lakh micro-SD cards worth a few crores without paying customs duty, officials said on Wednesday. [caption id=“attachment_7289141” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] CISF confiscated about a lakh micro-SD cards at IGI Airport in New Delhi on Wednesday. ANI[/caption] They said the passengers—Abhishek BB Ranpariya, Bhadresh D Ranpariya and Suresh Jaiswal—arrived at the IGI Airport from Hong Kong on Tuesday night and were on way to board a flight to Mumbai. The micro-SD card cache, used in mobile phones and other electronic gadgets to store photos and videos, is estimated to be worth anywhere between Rs three to six crores, he said. Ranpariya was intercepted by the Central Industrial Security Force officials for carrying such huge amount of micro-SD cards in his bag and Customs authorities were intimated, the official said. During verification, the passenger told the Customs officials that he will declare the cards cache at the Mumbai Customs, and he was allowed to leave after an intimation was made by officials to their counterparts in Mumbai. However, a CISF personnel of the intelligence wing later found that the passenger had changed his clothes and shoes, handed over the cards to two others and was seeking assistance of the airlines to abort his Mumbai journey. The two other passengers, understood to be his friends, were also seeking to abort the Mumbai leg of their travel and exit from the airport. However, before they could do this, CISF personnel nabbed them and handed them over to the Customs officials. The trio was possibly trying to evade the customs duty on micro-SD imported cards at Mumbai and hence decided to give a slip to their scheduled travel plan, the official said. The Customs officials are probing the case further, he said.