Mumbai: A 30-year-old Uttar Pradesh resident was admitted to JJ Hospital in Mumbai on May 8, after being brought in by the customs department for ingesting 250 gm of gold in the form of eight biscuits worth ₹12.66 lakh. While body packing is a known means of smuggling drugs across the globe, JJ doctors said this was the first time they encountered a body packer who swallowed gold.

“Custom officials told us that Intizar Ali had ingested gold pellets and was feeling uneasy,” said Dr Supriya Bhondve, assistant professor, surgery department, under whom Ali was admitted. “We did an X-ray and CT scan that showed eight metal objects stuck in his large and small intestines. On questioning him, he confessed to gulping down the gold bars on May 6 before flying to Mumbai.”

The doctors waited for two days for Ali to pass the bars normally via his stools. However, on Tuesday evening when the X-ray showed no movement of the bars, they planned a laparoscopic surgery. “We thought of the surgical option as the bars were stuck in the small bowel and there was a chance of small bowel obstruction or perforation, which could have been life-threatening,” said Dr Bhondve. “However, the patient developed cold feet and refused to give his consent.”

The doctors then put Ali on a high-fibre diet of a dozen bananas and green leafy vegetables every day. “For drug pellets, we generally put patients on laxatives but since it was gold bars, we put him on a high-fibre diet and made him drink three litres of water,” said Dr Bhondve. “We also monitored him 24×7 for symptoms of abdominal pain, vomiting and abdominal distension.”

On Thursday evening, Ali purged all the eight gold bars. “He was kept under observation for a few hours. Since his vitals were stable, we discharged him and handed him over to the customs officials,” said Dr Bhondve. Each bar was three to five centimetres long, and all together weighed around 250 gm.

JJ Hospital has seen close to 35 cases of body-packing in the last five to six years, with the highest number of drug pellets removed from a body being an astounding 126. “Our department has managed many body packers carrying cocaine or heroin pellets,” said Dr Ajay Bhandarwar, head of the surgery department. “But this was unique because the patient was carrying gold bars in his intestine, besides which they were stuck in his system for three days.”

According to a case report published in the Forensic Research and Criminology International Journal, the first reported case of body-packing of drugs in medical literature was reported in 1973, a case of swallowing hashish packed in condoms.

Customs officials said there were three types of body packers: “swallowers” who intentionally swallow material like drugs in pellet form, “pushers”, who use their rectum or vagina to transport smuggled goods and “stuffers” who swallow small amounts of smuggled material out of fear of arrest at the time of crossing boundaries.

“In our experience, Ali is the first body packer who swallowed a material like gold, that too in such a huge quantity,” said Manish Tiwari, commissioner of customs, of the first-time offender. “We have only seen swallowers swallowing drug pellets. For gold smuggling, we have always seen body packers as stuffers, who stuff the gold in their rectum or conceal it in paste form in the body.”