Over 80 kg gold missing: CVC wants customs to do stock taking

New Delhi, Aug 31 (PTI) The Central Vigilance Commission(CVC) has sought a report from the Customs over mysteriousdisappearance of gold from its vaults at international airporthere and directed it to carry out a detailed stock takingexercise at all its warehouses to check further loss. Official sources said today that the anti-corruptionwatchdog took cognisance of media reports and sought thereport on the matter. The CVC has asked the Customs department to re-check thegold kept in all the vaults to ensure there is no foul play,they said. Gold worth at least Rs 25 crore seized from smugglers hasmysteriously disappeared from customs vaults at Indira GandhiInternational Airport here. The Finance Ministry has alreadyrecommended CBI probe into the matter, the sources said. A huge haul of over 80 kg gold, both in form of bullionand jewellery, has gone missing from the customs warehouse. Inall the cases, it was replaced with non-precious yellow-coloured metal, they said. The seized gold was valued at Rs 25 crore as per currentmarket rates, the sources said. The cases of disappearance of gold had earlier beenreported to Delhi Police. As the pilferage continued, theFinance Ministry decided to recommend a CBI probe followingapproval of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, they said. The CBI has been asked to register a Preliminary Enquiry(PE) into the matter and find how the gold was replaced withthe non-precious metal inside the heavily guarded vault, thesources said. The vigilance wing of the Finance Ministry is alsolooking into the suspected role of customs officials, theysaid. Earlier, replying to an RTI query filed by PTI, the DelhiCustoms had said over 23 kg of gold worth more than Rs sixcrore had gone missing from its warehouse. In June last year, the customs officials had lodged anFIR in connection with the disappearance of 11 kg of goldworth Rs 2.92 crore from its vault. The gold was seized infive incidents from passengers at the international airport. Similar cases were also reported to the Delhi Police onJanuary 16, 20, April 30 and December 23, 2014 in which goldworth lakhs of rupees was replaced by a yellow-coloured metal. An FIR was registered in June this year by Delhi Policeon the complaint of customs officials who said two gold chainsand bangles, together weighing 298 gm, valued at about Rs 8.83lakh, were replaced with yellow-coloured non-precious metal.PTI AKV KIS RTKIS