Gold seizure along border spikes
Muktadir Rashid
Gold seizure during smuggling to India from Bangladesh has been spiking in recent years, with the Border Guard Bangladesh seizing more than 500 kilograms of the precious metal since 2018.
Intelligence and airport officials said that the lion share of gold legally brought to Bangladesh, mostly in the form of bars or biscuits, from Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries under baggage rules was channelled to India.
According to the Border Guard Bangladesh headquarters, 520.65 kilograms of gold was seized between January 2018 and October 2022, with arresting 194 suspects in 188 cases.
Most of those seizures took place along the country’s south-western borders, especially in Jashore, Satkhira, Chuadanga, Jhenaidah and Chapainawabganj, the BGB said.
The BGB headquarters disclosed that their battalions seized 131.90 kilograms of gold in the first 10 months of 2022 and arrested 59 people in 53 cases.
It stated that the quantity seized was only 50.80 kilograms in 2021, with 28 people arrested in 35 cases while the figures in 2020 were 87.9 kilograms, 41 arrests and 35 cases during the Covid pandemic.
In 2019, at least 54.23 kilograms of gold was seized and 35 people were arrested in 37 cases while the figures in 2018 were 195.79 kilograms, 31 arrests and 30 cases.
‘India has a huge demand for gold. A significant amount of the gold bought abroad and brought to Bangladesh is smuggled to that country. Our government is thus facing a two-pronged problem. The first is that we are losing revenue and the second is that dollars are used to purchase the gold abroad,’ said an intelligence official in Dhaka.
German database company Statista estimated that the demand for gold in India was about 797.30 tonnes in 2021. This quantity represented an increase by some 78.6 per cent in comparison to the previous year and it was the first growth in demand after four years of continual decline.
On Sunday, the BGB, acting on a tip-off, seized 80 gold bars weighing 9.28 kilograms along the Kashipur–Shahzadpur border in Chowgaccha upazila in Jashore but could not arrest the two suspected farmers.
Again on Monday, the border force in Jashore seized 20 gold bars weighing 2.33 kilograms at Narkelbaria of Sharsa upazila but failed to nab the carrier Tarikul Islam Tarek.
Like the intelligence official, Jashore’s Border Guard Bangladesh commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Shahed Minhaj Siddique told New Age that his battalion alone seized 80 kilograms of gold this year in 11 cases.
‘Most of them are gold runners and they transport the item only for Tk 3,000 per consignment,’ said Minhaz, adding, ‘We have interrogated those suspects and found that they were involved in smuggling out seven to eight consignments before their arrest.’
BGB officials said that the actual owners of that gold are Indians and they smuggled those through Bangladesh because of a huge demand and higher price in India.
The Bangladesh Jewellers Association on November 17 increased the price of gold by Tk1,750 per bhori.
Earlier, on November 12, the price was raised by Tk 2,333 per bhori. However, the price of silver remained the same.
According to India Gold Rate website, the price of each gram of 22 carat gold in Bangladesh was Tk 4,348.95 on November 18 while the price in Kolkata was Rs 4,995 on November 20.
London-based financial technology firm Wise on Monday stated that currently one Indian rupee fetched 1.26 Bangladeshi taka.
A senior intelligence official serving in the police said that they noticed that overseas gold reached Dhaka or Chattogram by plane with passengers but is actually destined for Indian cities by air or land.
The Dhaka Customs House in its latest statistics it shared with New Age showed that they seized 1,010.71 kilograms of gold between January 2021 and June 2022.
During the same period, DCH disclosed, 41,048.6 kilograms of gold in bars [each bar weighs a little less than 234 grams] or ornaments was formally released under customs formalities at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport alone. The government collected Tk 741.040 crore revenue from that sale.
On September 17, the BGB arrested an alleged gold carrier, Hridoy Hossain, with 20 gold bars weighing 2.33kilograms from Benapole in Jashore.
On September 27, the Bangladesh border force arrested Sakib Hossain, just a 19-year-old adolescent, at Sharsha border in Jessore and found 10 gold bars in a manure bag he was carrying.
On October 16, it arrested Shamim-Ul Islam, 40, son of late Sajedul Islam, a resident of Gerakhali village in Kalaroa upazila, with four gold bars weighing 506 grams engaged in an alleged act of gold smuggling in Binerpota area in Satkhira.
In a similar incident on the other side of the border, India Today reported, the Indian Border Security Force arrested a man named Nazim Mandal for smuggling 81 gold biscuits into the Indian state of West Bengal on September 12. That was the third incident of gold smuggling into the state reported in four consecutive days. Previously, on September 7, BSF troops seized 40 gold biscuits in the state.
The BSF South Bengal Frontier in Kolkata declined to comment on the volume of gold smuggled into the state and the number of arrests they made so far.
The Indian border force, however, raised its concerns in the 18th region commander-level talks with the BGB held in the Indian city of Kolkata in mid of November.
Asked, Bangladesh delegation head Brigadier General ABM Nowroj Ehsan, north-west regional BGB commander, told New Age that they intensified the anti-smuggling programme as gold smuggling was also a concern for Bangladesh.