KARACHI: The contempt of court notices were issued against Collector Customs and Additional Collector Customs, Appraisement West, by a divisional bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC) comprising Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan on Tuesday.
The bench was hearing a constitution petition pertaining to imported mobile phones consignment lying with the custom officials despite payment of Customs duty taxes to the tune of Rs25 million.
The court time and again directed the Custom authorities to settle the issue and release the goods but instead of releasing the goods, consignment remained detained on one or another pretext which irked the bench on previous hearing too.
Ismat Mehdi advocate submitted the original PTA certificate and said that now the petitioner is not interested in release of the consignment and his pay order in terms of custom duty etc may please be ordered to be returned.
The bench taking notice of the bureaucratic wrangles and failure of the custom officials to implement orders of the issued issuing contempt of court notice to Collector Dr Fareed Iqbal Qureshi and Additional Collector Saleem Memon asked them to show cause that why courts’ orders were ignored.
The contemnors were asked to appear before the court on May 24, 2016 along with written reply to the show cause notices under contempt of court act.
Collector MCC Preventive Tariq Huda had seized the consignment M/s Zawa Impex of mobile phones which was imported on vague description and under single PCT and it was being re-exported as frustrated cargo.
The consignment was imported by M/s Zawa Impex Lahore in August and no GD or TP was filed for the consignment clearance. Later the importer filed a request for re-export of consignment stating the consignment was actually meant for Dubai, where they kept their stock and it was then imported in smaller lots.