Doctors remove 12 gold bars from Indian man's stomach

Doctors in India removed 12 bars of gold worth a reported $20,000 from the stomach of a businessman, the BBC reported.

The 63-year-old was admitted to hospital in Delhi with symptoms of "acute intestinal obstruction". He complained of stomach pain and vomiting and claimed to have swallowed a bottle cap.

He was taken to surgery where doctors found a dozen 33gm gold bars stacked in his stomach.

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Dr CS Ramachandran, a senior surgeon at Delhi's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital told the BBC: "This is the first time I have recovered gold from the stomach of a patient. I remember having taken out a bladder stone weighing 1kg from a patient. But finding gold in a patient's stomach was something unbelievable."

The operation took place on April 9 and lasted three hours.

"It was a tedious three-hour-long operation. He is an old patient and we had to be careful. We found 12 gold bars lying in a stack in his stomach."

Doctors reported the incident to police and customs officials who confiscated the gold.

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According to the Indian Express. the man had attempted to smuggle the gold into India from Singapore in late March.  

India tripled the import duty on gold in 2013 to curb demand, causing a spike in gold smuggling.