Customs officials recovered Saudi riyal 964,500, equivalent to Tk 1.73 crore from a scanner-proof suitcase of a Dubai-bound passenger at the Zia International Airport yesterday.

The passenger, Chowdhury K, managed to escape arrest despite the customs officials' an hour and a half-long manhunt, airport officials said.

Customs Superintendent Ashoke Barua said following information he and other high officials identified the suitcase prior to the departure of the passenger in a Qatar Airways flight yesterday morning.

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"We scanned the suitcase thrice, but failed to detect the currencies as those were kept inside a scanningproof layer inside the suitcase," Ashoke told The Daily Star.

He said he found 25 shirts but could not trace the currency with the scanning machine. However, the scanner detected a layer inside the suitcase prompting the customs officials to break through the layer.

"Finally I reconfirmed the information from my source and found the currency," Ashoke said.

The currency was being smuggled out of the country using technology that could evade scanning, he added.

Customs sources said a syndicate is behind the smuggling, as the passport number of the passenger could not be found in any documents in the airport. According to the airlines, Karnaphuli Travels collected the ticket from them.

The customs officials said they could only identify the name of the passenger by checking the boarding card and we confirmed the passenger's boarding card from the luggage tag. He was flying Qatar Airlines flight-345 bound for Doha, but his final destination was Dubai.

The flight was first scheduled to take off at 8:30am, but it was rescheduled to 9:47am.

Customs sources said the passenger boarded the aircraft but got down sensing trouble and left the airport quietly.