Chennai: Sleuths from the directorate of revenue intelligence seized on Sunday morning a huge quantity of foreign branded cigarettes from air passengers who arrived at Coimbatore from Sharjah and Dubai. Six passengers traveling on the Air Arabia flight were detained by the DRI teams when they were trying to walk through the green channel.

They were carrying cigarettes worth Rs 32.7 lakh camouflaged as personal baggage of household articles. A total of 3,40,000 cigarette sticks were seized by the DRI in the morning operation carried out after keeping a surveillance on certain persons suspected to be part of smuggling gangs.

“All the six passengers were interrogated by the DRI teams, which found that they preferred Coimbatore as their destination on a regular basis since scrutiny at the major international airport by Customs became very strict,” a DRI official said. Cases were booked against passengers P Jayachandran, 44, Abdul Rahaman, 49, Shon Vignesh, 23, Syedu Mohamed, 29, A Raja Mohamed, 34 and Naufal Mukkthar, 22.