Kenyan woman arrested in India with gold worth Sh26m

Kenyan woman arrested at Mumbai International Airport on suspicion of smuggling gold. [Standard, File]

A Kenyan woman was on Sunday, February 3 arrested at Mumbai International Airport on suspicion of smuggling 3.6 kilograms of gold worth Sh26.4 million to India.

Sadia Mohammed Ali, 38, had left Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) two days before.

She was apprehended when police and customs officials in Mumbai searched her and found the undeclared consignment. The suspect was locked up together with eight other suspects.

International media reported that Sadia was being investigated for among other offences, smuggling of eight kilograms of gold and five iPhones from a foreign country.

On Monday night, detectives from the Transnational organised crime conducted a swoop in Nairobi and arrested a man said to be an accomplice of the suspect.

This was after investigators, acting on a tip off, linked the man to a consignment that was scheduled to leave the country last night through JKIA.

According to the investigators, the suspect, (name withheld) had been linked to a consignment of three boxes containing 402 kilograms of gold that was being shipped into a South African country.

According to documents in the hands of investigators, this consignment had already been loaded into a private jet ready to leave the country, police said.

In the past, some of the consignments have been traced to Istanbul, Brussels, Belgium, and in the UAE. By last evening, police were still searching for more accomplices.