Official sources informed that the Preventive Unit of Mumbai Customs seized smuggled goods worth Rs 50 crore and Rs 35 crore in the financial years 2015-16 and 2014-15, respectively.
Official sources informed that the Preventive Unit of Mumbai Customs seized smuggled goods worth Rs 50 crore and Rs 35 crore in the financial years 2015-16 and 2014-15, respectively. Principal commissioner of the unit, A.K. Jyotishi, informed The Asian Age that a total 22 cases were booked in the financial year 2015-16, out of which, in five cases, a total 13,009.35kg of goods were seized, having a value of Rs 1,102.63 lakh. These goods had been imported by falsely declaring them as imitation jewellery and imported along with other miscellaneous items to disguise the smuggled goods.
Preventive Unit officials said that the unit had made the highest seizure during this financial year, seizing goods, including cigarettes, high-ended branded consumer goods, saffron, silver, jewellery, gold, LED TV sets, CRGO (steel sheets), multimedia accessories and high-ended mobile phones like iPhone, Blackberry etc. The goods were seized from Mumbai, Rajgadh, Thane and Palghar. Officials said that the unit conducts anti-smuggling operations within the metropolitan area and intercepts goods coming by rail or road or those stored in godowns.
With 35 offices along the state’s coast, the unit has found the importers have adopted a unique modus operandi for clandestine import by mis-declaring description and quantity and importing them in the guise of other low value goods. A top official from the unit said that sometimes, these activities were undertaken using Import Export Code (IEC) obtained on fake documents of some other person with the malafide intention of evading customs duty.
Mr Jyotishi said that goods were landing in the southern parts of the country from foreign countries and then coming to the city via road in order to escape customs duty. Elaborating on the same, he said cigarettes worth Rs 1.86 crore were found to be smuggled in the guise of pencil boxes from Dubai; these cigarettes were of all brands including high-end brands. Similarly, a godown was raided, which was posing as a godown of local tyres but was keeping high-ended, branded tyres.
Another modus operandi spotted during this fiscal was one in which people made local products that looked like high-end profucts and sold them outside. “They fake bills, but we have a notifying system with companies and they inform us, while importing and exporting things, and when we notice some consignment without notification, we seize and destroy them,” said an official.
