KARACHI: A divisional bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC) comprising Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan on Wednesday reserved judgment in a constitutional petition filed by Rahim Mirani, an importer of mobile phones based at Lahore under permission from Q mobile.
The bench earlier heard the Collector Customs Preventive Tariq Huda and Ismat Mehdi advocate, counsel for petitioner at length.
At the outset of the hearing today, Tariq Huda who was summoned by the court angered by friction between the two collectorates, Preventive and Appraisement observed that “This should have been resolved before coming to the court”.
A law point is involved and your Lordship may adjudicate it, submitted Collector Customs, Preventive justifying the jurisdiction and confiscating a consignment, which was under process by the Customs Appraisement.
He submitted that there is an annual demand of six Crore mobile phones in the country. Out of this two and a half Crore are being imported legally while three and a half Crore are being smuggled in, he told the court.
The Customs Preventive taking notice of such a big quantum of smuggling under took a research to find out the routes and method of smuggling as such a huge quantity cannot be through air route, he said. During investigations and checking it was found that major route of smuggling was via containerized cargo after which surveillance was mounted. During a raid at Gulabi, 27000 mobile phones were recovered and confiscated, Tariq Huda told the court.
As we came to know that more containers are awaiting clearance at Karachi port and attempts would be made to smuggle the same under garb of transactional goods, Preventive wrote a letter to all collect orates and field formations about bids to smuggle in mobile phones.
In the mean while importers in order to thwart any action by the Customs Preventive attempted to re-export the said consignments as Frustrated cargo, said Tariq Huda.
He said that on the basis of the GD, Essam Enterprises were summoned who disowned the cargo. The consignment was examined and on boxes names of Karachi based traders was found establishing that it was not a frustrate d cargo but was destined for Karachi, submitted the Collector Customs Preventive.
Was the consignment examined, the bench asked and when the answer came in affirmative, the bench was angered. It was a lack of confidence between two collect orates, said the bench adding that Appraisement has full powers to examine a consignment.
Tariq Huda in another attempt to defend the action by ASO of confiscating and removing the consignment from the jurisdiction of Appraisement without bringing it in the knowledge of Appraisement said appraisement has a simple role of assessing the consignments and if found legal shall release after collecting custom duty and taxes.
There are comments by Appraisement that Preventive is not allowing them to do their work and that they were in the process of examining all the aspects of the case, the bench told the Collector Preventive.
Tariq Huda then referred to a racket of smugglers and said a particular group is involved in the smuggling of the mobile phones and petitioner Rahim Mirani is just a front man as Proprietor is the one Waheed.
Preventing the smuggling is our mandate and we are doing our best. Still we may be lacking but the effort is to choke all points, stated Collector Customs Preventive.
Ismat Mehdi advocate, counsel for the petitioner in her arguments took the court through documents and showed that consignment of her client came earlier. She showed a number of letters to prove that while Customs Appraisement was dealing with her consignment, ASO and Preventive officers interfered illegally, disallowed grounding of the container at the terminal for examination under One GD etc. She established that Appraisement officials were not allowed to their part of duty.
She maintained that consignment was not in the category of restricted or smuggled goods, imported through a legal notified route.
The bench asked her that why mind of the importer changed and GD was filed for home consumption. In reply she said that Preventive arrested a person who remained in prison for 30 days and while deciding the bail application Special Customs Court asked him that whether he is ready to pay the custom duty and other taxes at which he ( applicant of bail) agreed and an amount of rupees 2Crore , 40 lac were paid . No custom officer of Appraisement was arrested in the said FIR, she said. The bench also observed that Preventive was bound to take action against importer as well as officials of customs in such cases.
All the out-lets and inlets are in your control. Do your duty but remain well within its jurisdiction, the bench said reserving the judgment in the petition.