Guns earlier, now gold smuggled from Myanmar is worrying India.

“Gold is the biggest contraband from Myanmar,” T Bijando Singh, superintendent of the Imphal division of customs and stationed at Moreh along the Myanmar border said.

When militant outfits in the northeast started laying down arms five-six years ago, the parallel economy that depended on them took a hit. Arms smuggling had been big across the India-Myanmar border. The routes were in place. So were the networks of carriers. All that was needed was a new product. So a switch was made — from AK-47s to gold.

“Gold is the biggest contraband from Myanmar,” T Bijando Singh, superintendent of the Imphal division of customs and stationed at Moreh along the Myanmar border, told TOI. Gold enters India as biscuits, each weighing 166g and with no mark of origin, from deposits in Kachin and Kayin states and the four regions of Mandalay, Sagaing, Bago and Tanintharyi. “Gold consignments change hands quickly,” Singh said.

The first stop is Imphal, from where gold is sent out — by road through Dimapur in Nagaland or Silchar in Assam and then by rail or air to Kolkata or New Delhi. From these points, it is distributed to other parts of India. Most gold seizures by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) have been from Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi, which are big consumption centres of smuggled gold. And the gold is of high quality — with a purity of 99.76%.

Customs seized 3,223 kg gold worth Rs 974 crore in 2017-18. A DRI report adds that smuggled gold that ends up being seized accounts for just 5-10% of the total illegal trade – which means that even by conservative estimates the gold smuggling market in India is worth at least Rs 9,000 crore.

Driving this gold rush are three factors. Myanmar’s gold is cheaper, at least Rs 400-500 lower per gram than Indian gold. Import duties in India are high — 10% customs duty and 3% GST. And while Myanmar does not allow trade of gold in its native form, the product’s demand is the highest in India. Sources say a share of the gold exported by India to the Middle East is from the stash originally smuggled in from Myanmar.

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