New Delhi, Apr 18: An elderly businessman ended up in hospital after swallowing a dozen gold biscuits for a safe smuggling'. Doctors found as many as 12 gold biscuits weighing a total of 396 grams inside the abdomen of 63-year-old businessman from Chandni Chowk, who had recently come from Singapore.
The plan, however, got 'stuck' as the man could not pass the bullion through his stool. He tried everything from drinking lots of fluid to using laxatives but the biscuits stayed in the small intestine, causing pain.
Doctors who operated on the businessman said he did not eat anything for 10 days hoping the gold would come out. "When it did not, he came to us for surgery claiming that he had accidentally swallowed a water bottle cap," a doctor said.
"I have been treating this patient since 1989, when he came for gall bladder removal. He is a wealthy man with a good business in Chandni Chowk and both his sons are settled abroad. It is both surprising and shocking to know that he could do something like this," said Dr C S Ramachandran, senior consulting surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram hospital.
The businessman was admitted in the hospital on April 9. "It was a high-risk surgery because the patient had undergone operation four times in the past. We counselled him and finally got together a team of surgeons to get through the abdominal cavity to remove the foreign metal," said Dr Dhawal Sharma, another surgeon.
He said two hours into the surgery, what they found left everyone in the operation theatre shell-shocked. "It was like digging into a gold mine. The biscuits were coming out one after the other," the doctor said.
According to the doctors, they had to use handheld metal detectors to ascertain the exact position of the biscuits. "The body has a natural tendency to push them forward and it is important to know the position to take them out safely. Normally, we use repeat x-ray for the purpose but that is too tedious," said Dr Ramachandran. He said that the police and custom authorities were immediately informed about the incident and they seized the gold. The patient, he added, was discharged on April 15.
A custom official, who did not want to identified, said usually the smugglers hide gold biscuits in the rectum area. "In the last six months, the smuggling of gold has gone up significantly," the official said.
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