KARACHI: The contempt of court proceedings against Collector Customs and Additional Collector Customs, Appraisement West were adjourned till June 03, 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 earlier issued a notice to the alleged contemnors on May 18 for today in 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. The bench taking notice of the bureaucratic wrangles and failure of the custom officials to implement order decided to issue contempt of court notice to Collector Dr Fareed Iqbal Qureshi and Additional Collector Saleem Memon asking them to show cause that why courts’ orders were ignored.
The contemnors who were asked to appear before the court today remained in attendance since 8:30 a.m till the bench discharged the case at around 11:30 a.m fixing June 3 as next date of hearing.
Collector MCC Preventive Tariq Huda had seized the consignment M/s Zawah 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 Zawah 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.