A woman has been arrested at Bandaranaike International Airport with a consignment of gold jewellery valued at Rs. 36,628,937, NewsFirst reported on Tuesday.

Officers of the Airport Police Narcotic Bureau stopped the passenger, who had arrived from Dubai, as she attempted to take the jewellery out of the airport.

The consignment weighed 916 grams and consisted of bangles and necklaces packed into 12 parcels, carried inside a travel bag. Police said the jewellery had been imported illegally.

The suspect is a 38-year-old resident of Halgahadeniya, Angoda.

Context

Gold brought into Sri Lanka above the personal allowance must be declared to Customs and attracts duty. Undeclared consignments are treated as illegal imports, and the value placed on a seizure is the assessed market value of the metal and workmanship rather than a penalty figure.

The Airport Police Narcotic Bureau, despite its name, handles a broad enforcement remit at Katunayake and regularly makes non-narcotics seizures of this kind. Similar arrests have involved passengers arriving from Dubai with gold concealed in luggage as well as courier-style consignments split into multiple parcels — a pattern that keeps individual items below the weight at which a single piece would draw attention.

Neither report says whether the suspect has been produced in court, whether she was granted bail, or whether investigators believe she was carrying the jewellery for another party.

Sourcing note

Update, September 29: Hiru News has since filed its own account of the seizure, confirming every reported detail independently — the suspect’s age and Halgahadeniya, Angoda address, the Airport Police Narcotic Bureau as the arresting unit, the arrival from Dubai, and the 916 grams across 12 parcels valued at Rs. 36,628,937. It adds no new facts, but the story no longer rests on a single newsroom.

Ada Derana also carried this story, adding a flight number and arrival time, but its site returned a CloudFront 403 to every retrieval route attempted and LankaNewz has not reproduced details it could not fetch directly.