KARACHI: The judge, Special Customs Court Karachi while extending judicial remand of five accused clearing agents fixed hearing of their bail pleas on Jan 27.
Noman, Saad and three other clearing agents were arrested by Pakistan Customs, Appraisement in a case of smuggling of goods worth rupees 221 M.
The accused were booked in a FIR 10 of 2018 lodged on 13-1-2018 after a customs team raided Al-Hamd Container terminal leading to seizure four containers resulting in recovery of 31112 mobile phones and tablets.
According to details, Collector Customs West Shehnaz Maqbool received a tip off that huge quantity of mobile phones and others would be cleared from the port by misdeclaration made in the bill of landing B/L.
The Collector Customs Appraisement West constituted a raiding party headed by Deputy Collector, R&D, Imran Rasool which kept the suspicious containers under watch and lastly seized the same in the presence of officials of intelligence and other security agencies.
The containers belonged to Messers Arham & Co, Lahore, Rana Enterprises the initial investigations revealed.
The raiding party opened all the four containers and found that the container were stuffed with mobile phones and tablets of different branch while the B/Ls declared the containers to have garment accessories, refrigerator parts and disperse dyes.
According to estimates, the seized mobile phones and tablet are worth rupees 221 million.
The special court judge heard counsel from Franklin Law Associates appearing for the applicants/accused in custody and fixed hearing into bail pleas for Jan 27.