Officials at the Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport in India’s central Madhya Pradesh said that seven members of the alleged smuggling ring were caught red-handed right  in the middle of their intricate operation, and shortly after they disembarked an India-bound plane from Dubai early Saturday.

The passengers, including one woman, went to great lengths to avoid detection. Officials say they recovered some of the cargo from the smugglers’ rectums while the rest was stashed in their clothes, including undergarments.

In their bid to trick the customs, the suspects turn the gold into a kind of a paste and put it into capsules, so it could be relatedly easy hidden on the body or swallowed.

The smugglers, who are said to be repeated offenders, were to fly to Mumbai later on Saturday,  where they were likely to sell the gold on the black market. The recovered haul is set to worth some $298,000  (Rs 2.1 crore).

While the preferred mode of the valuable cargo’s transportation might be unusual in this particular case, gold smuggling in India is nothing but a common crime. In one of the biggest busts in May this year, officials seized 110 kg of gold in Mumbai, declared as brass metal in the customs papers.

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