Guwahati Police recovered approximately 37 kg of suspected smuggled gold during an operation on June 29 at the Kharghuli area in Guwahati on June 30, 2026. A man from Maharashtra was arrested in connection with the case.
| Photo Credit: ANI
In what officials say is the biggest-ever such seizure in Assam, the State police on Monday night (June 29, 2026) recovered 37.064 kg of suspected smuggled gold valued at ₹54 crore from a Maharashtra-based man with disabilities in Guwahati.
The police also seized 13 grams of silver nodules, four mobile phones, and ₹3,755 in cash from 32-year-old Akshay Bansode, arrested in connection with the case. A native of Sangli in Maharashtra, he was staying in Guwahati’s Gandhibasti area for two months.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Shambhavi Mishra said her team followed intelligence inputs that did not specify if the gold was genuine or fake.
“We zeroed in on the accused and recovered the gold bars,” she said, adding that Mr. Bansode could not produce any legal documents for the consignment.
According to the police, the investigation revealed international gold-smuggling links to Myanmar and West Asia, and domestically to Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Bengaluru. “We are still probing further links to unearth the full syndicate, past deliveries, and financial trails,” Ms. Mishra said.
She further said that the accused worked as a delivery agent for a salary of ₹80,000 per month.
“He appeared like any other person when we intercepted him, but we found out that he was involved in the smuggling of about 20 kg of gold on three previous occasions. This was his fourth attempt,” Ms. Mishra said.
Much of the smuggled gold in Assam and other parts of the northeast comes from Myanmar. Smuggled primarily through Moreh in Manipur and Zokhawthar in Mizoram, the gold is routed to West Asia via India’s metros.
Foreign currency returned
Officials at Guwahati’s Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi International Airport on Tuesday returned an unattended bag, containing ₹10.14 lakh in foreign currency, to the representative of the passenger to whom it belonged.
Central Industrial Security Force personnel detected the bag at the automated tray retrieval system during routine security screening at the airport’s Terminal 1 on June 26. Inside the bag were some medicines, personal belongings, and foreign currencies.
“U.S. dollars in the bag worked out to ₹10.13 lakh at current prices. The remaining cash was in Chinese yuans,” a spokesperson of Adani Airport Holdings Limited, which operates the airport, said.
“A name written on the bag and the medicine strips helped identify the passenger, who had already boarded a flight to Hyderabad by then,” she said.
Officials of Customs, Income Tax, and other agencies found the cash was accounted for. After the formalities, the passenger was traced and the bag was returned after verifying its ownership.
Published – June 30, 2026 11:17 pm IST