A married couple was arrested at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport here for trying to smuggle 45 hand guns into the country, customs officials said on Wednesday. Officers making the arrests said a ballistic report would confirm whether the guns were genuine.
“But in a preliminary report, the National Security Guard (NSG) has confirmed that the guns are fully functional,” an official said. The accused, who arrived here on Monday from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, were kept under surveillance by the authorities.
The couple had a newborn daughter with them. Customs said in a statement that the male passenger was carrying two trolley bags, given to him by his older brother, who had arrived from Paris around the same time and day the couple’s flight from Vietnam landed here.
It said that the elder brother slipped from the airport after handing over the trolley bag. The woman passenger was also an active part of the scheme as she helped her husband remove and destroy the tags of both the trolley bags containing the guns, the statement said.
Further, examination of these two trolley bags carried by Yatri-1 (male passenger) resulted in the recovery of 45 assorted brand guns worth around Rs.22.5 lakh. Both were arrested and their child was handed over to her grandmother, the statement said.
Both the passengers have also admitted their previous involvement in the smuggling of 25 composite guns worth Rs 12.5 lakh from Turkey.
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