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Gold bars worth $1M found in plane lavatory

ASSOCIATED PRESS / 1999
Cleaners found a stash of 24 gold bars worth more than $1.1 million hidden in an airplane lavatory. Shown here are Jet Airways planes - like the one the gold bars were discovered in - parked on the tarmac at the domestic airport terminal in Mumbai, India.

NEW DELHI >> Cleaners found a stash of 24 gold bars worth more than $1.1 million hidden in an airplane lavatory after a flight from Bangkok arrived in eastern India, officials said today.

The Jet Airways plane had landed in Kolkata and was being cleaned before a scheduled flight to Patna when the cleaners found two bags with the gold stashed inside, Customs official Mona Priyadarshini said.

Priyadarshini said the gold bars weighed around 1 kilogram each. Customs officials confiscated the stash and are investigating.

India is one of the world’s biggest consumers of gold. The government increased the gold import duty recently, which officials say has encouraged smuggling.

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