9 more scanners at airport to ease customs officials’ work

“We are in the process of installing nine machines on the arrival conveyor belts. The machines will be operated by customs officials and will be installed right at the start of the conveyor belts in the airside of the airport. The first machine will be installed in February and the rest will be installed by April end this year,” said Manish Kalghatgi,spokesperson,Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL).

“We mainly rely on tip-offs when it comes to detection of such materials. If a diamond is not encased in a metal like gold,it only shows as a speck of dust on the scanners which makes it extremely difficult to detect. In case of jewellery items like gold and silver,they can be easily detected because their density is much higher than that of diamonds,” said an official from the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of the Mumbai Customs on condition of anonymity. “Studded or semi-finished jewellery can easily be detected as they come across as black dots on the scanner’s monitor,” the official added.

According to officials from AIU,most of the spot detections at the airport come from strict observation of passengers. “It involves not just one official but an entire team to concentrate on passengers and their behaviour. Most of the time passengers make mistakes. The common ones are them avoiding the scanners and putting them immediately in front of the machines,” said the official.

The Mumbai airport already has an in-line baggage system in place at departure terminals. This is programmed to divert suspicious baggage to another tray and send them for further security checks. “International arrivals are not a security issue but we are installing more advanced scanners,” added Kalghatgi.