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A man passing through an airport with nine gold bars hidden in his rectum has sparked calls for greater passenger surveillance to prevent gold smuggling.

The seizure was made last week by the Indian Customs Department at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport in Delhi, the Hindustan Times reported.

The 24-year-old passenger was intercepted upon his arrival from Dubai and arrested. The gold weighed 1.04kg in total.

The seizure highlights an increase in attempts by people to smuggle gold from the Middle East and elsewhere to India by concealing it within their bodies.

A year ago, a Customs swoop on Madurai International Airport in Tamil Nadu, southern India, found 29 passengers aboard two international flights from Colombo in Sri Lanka were hiding gold bullion in their rectums.

The Customs probe found gold hidden in various places but the “ingenious way of concealment” – the rectum – seemed to be gaining popularity, according to India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).

That has been borne out by seizures since.

Another recent case at Delhi airport involved two passengers from different flights, who were found to have “one gold bar and five gold biscuits weighing 1.5 kgs” concealed in their rectums.

As gold is a very heavy metal, the physical dimensions of gold bars are not great. A 10 ounce (311 gram) gold bar, for instance, is typically 60mm long by 35mm wide by 8mm thick. It’s worth about AUD 16,615.

Written by Peter Needham