Gold smuggling rises in India

Indians traditionally hoard gold in the belief it will bring financial security. Now India, the world's largest consumer of gold, is seeing a record rise in smuggling. An estimated 700kg of gold is smuggled into India every day. Officials at India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) say the country has not seen such a sharp rise in contraband gold for two decades. They claim smugglers are using innovative ways to bring in the metal illegally. Sometimes gold is melted into seed-shaped chips and hidden in dates from Dubai, or ground into granules and mixed with other metals to look like ore. The metal is also being converted into gold belt buckles and torch batteries. The smuggling is becoming increasingly difficult to contain, admit regulators, according to BBC.