LAHORE: On the directions of Chief Collector Central Region Madam Zeba Hai Azhar to curb the menace of smuggling in Lahore and upon receipt of a secret information by the Collector Preventive Zulfikar Ali Chaudhary, that an attempt is being made to smuggle a huge quantity of foreign origin cigarettes into Lahore via Railway cargo, the Additional Collector Muhammad Nayyer Shafiq, constituted a team under the supervision of Assistant Collector Anti-Smuggling Organization, Muhammad Asim Awan to thwart the attempt of smuggling.
Consequently a raiding party led by Superintendent ASO Nasir Minhas including Inspectors Mansab Shah, Mughal e Azam, Sajjad Bokhari and Sepoys Arshad Rajpoot, M Boota, Nisar, Khan, Najeeb, Noor Zaman, Bashir ud Din and others was constituted.
Accordingly, the team arrived at the Railway cargo godown, near Railway Station at 7:00 am on 25.3.17 and began search of cargo vans arrived from Karachi. Detailed search led to a recovery of foreign origin (Italy and England ) smuggled cigarettes 190 cartons i.e 1.9 million sticks ( 1900,000). The goods were accordingly seized under the provisions of Customs Act 1969. Investigation is underway as to who booked the goods from Karachi and who was the recipient in Lahore as no documents could be retrieved from cargo manager’s record. The value of the seized cigarettes is approximately about Rs10 million.
In a similar action last night, a vehicle was traced while loading cigarettes near Bansanwala Bazar Lahore. On seeing the customs staff the driver fled along with the vehicle leaving behind 30 cartons i.e 300,000 sticks of Smuggled cigarettes of England origin.
The value of the seized cigarettes is about Rs1.5 million. Also on 24.3.17 the anti-vehicle smuggling squad of ASO led by Inspector Sajjad Bokhari intercepted and detained a vehicle Toyota Land Cruiser Prado valuing about Rs2.5 million on suspicion of being smuggled into country in violation of Customs Act after evading revenue of the federal government.
