Athletes tricked into smuggling liquor
August 3, 2010 09:54 am
Yet another instance of exploitation
of innocence came to the fore when at the India Tiruchy airport, a group of
athletes, 11 to 22 years old, were found carrying duty-free liquor. All of them
had flown in on flight from Colombo after an athletic meet there.
The athletes from Tiruchy were each
given a bag by some “unknown” passengers, and told to “just” carry the bag out
of the airport complex.
“I do not know the name of the
passenger who handed the bag to me. I refused to carry it at first but they
forcefully kept it along with my luggage,” said a 12-year-old who won three
silver medals in the Chennai-Colombo Junior Athletic Meet held in Sri Lanka.
“They said they would collect it
once I was outside the airport complex. We did not know what was in the bag,”
another athlete (16), who bagged gold in 100m, said.
Of the 21 athletes, at least 10 were
found holding bags carrying liquor bottles. Yet the team coach seems not to
have noticed anything out of the ordinary. When asked, Suganthi Annavi, team
coordinator and coach, claimed “unknown passengers” had asked her also to carry
a bag but she had refused to do so. “Still, without my knowledge, they got the
juniors to do it for them.”
As per duty-free shopping norms, any
international air passenger is allowed to carry upto two liquor bottles bought
from the duty free shop. Manipulating this provision, the ingenious liquor “smugglers”
used the young athletes to carry their contraband for them through customs, two
bottles per person.
Sources said the “unknown
co-passengers” had with them a full and complete list of all the athletes, with
their full details.
Two unidentified persons later came
to the airport, collected the bags and made a hurried exit.
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