Customs officials recovered 240 gold bars weighing around 28 kilogrammes (kg) from a flight of Regent Airways at the Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong on Thursday evening.Admitting the matter, Moshiur Rahman Mondal, assistant commissioner of Customs at the at the Shah Amanat International Airport, said, “We have found the gold bars in abandoned condition, after searching the toilet of the plane.”He added, the bars were lying on the floor of the toilet of the aircraft which landed at the airport from Bangkok around 6:45pm on Thursday. The market value of the recovered gold bars is worth Tk 12 crore, he added.Police also arrested two persons in the connections. Earlier, on March 25, this year, the customs officials seized 107 kilograms of gold worth over Tk 46 crore at Shah Amanat International Airport, making it the biggest ever haul of gold in the port city.Seven people were arrested and three detained for their alleged involvement in smuggling the consignment of gold in 923 bars.Acting on a tip-off, the customs officials found the gold bars after searching an aircraft of Biman Bangladesh Airlines (BG-026), which was landed in the airport after transits in Doha and Dubai. Some of the bars were found stashed under a passenger seat. Some of the gold had been abandoned.Earlier, on February 6, this year, gold bars weighing 49 kg were also seized at Chittagong airport.Apart from this, the customs officials seized 53 gold bars from a passenger on transit at the airport on April 7.
