13 Oct 2007 Manju V & Nitasha Natu
,Times Of India.##MUMBAI: A consignment containing 3.5 kg of diamonds and gold jewellery was stolen from Mumbai airport on Thursday night. The theft took place after 9.30pm when a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok, TG 317, landed in Mumbai.
As per the norms, such consignments have to be received at the final destination by a team comprising officials involved with airport security (in this case the Central Industrial Security Force), the airlines' ground handling agency (which, for Thai Airways, is Air India) and representatives of the Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation. An airport custodian for precious cargo may also be present.
"But when the aircraft landed and the cargo was offloaded, the receiving team had not yet reached the spot," said an airport source. "One of the consignments contained only gold jewellery and the other had diamonds worth crores. They had both originated at different points, one from Auckland (New Zealand) and the other from Narita airport (Japan). The final leg of their journey was from Bangkok to Mumbai. The cargo was offloaded at Bay 53 at Mumbai along with other boxes," the source added.
The Sahar police have registered an FIR under section 379 of the Indian Penal Code for theft and have rounded up for questioning dozens of workers and officials who had been present in the area on Thursday night. There is some discrepancy over what happened next. The airport source said the two consignments were then "left on the tarmac without any special attention". However, Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner (crime) for Mumbai police, said, "After the stolen container was offloaded at the Mumbai airport, it was to be stored in a secured area. But the handlers put it in an area where empty containers are stored.
Minutes later, the receiving team arrived near the plane only to find that all the cargo had already been offloaded. The team rushed to the cargo complex where all containers are usually taken. The cargo complex maintains a register of every container that enters its gates. "While the gold jewellery consignment had reached the cargo complex, the register had no details of the one carrying the diamonds," the airport source said.##
There is a saying for people who work at the airports," The airport is a place where only aircraft's land and take of ,apart from that there many business which run from the airport apart from legeal business.......
This week has shown that the calm was just a breather, bomb blast in Ajmer and a fidayeen attack in Kashmir shows that how venerable we are and how easy it is for anyone to plan and execute...I hope people with power to change the system listen...as infiltration like this shows that we have a chinks in our armour......
VT on security
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