KARACHI: Collectorate of Customs Preventive Anti-Smuggling Organization (ASO) gears up crackdown against smuggling of contraband items specially the betel nuts at rail routes.
According to the details, authentic information was received by Collector Preventive Dr Iftikhar Ahmed regarding the smuggling of huge quantity of betel nuts worth millions of rupees through rail route.
Deputy Collector Customs Headquarters Muhammad Faisal reacting over the secret information regarding the smuggling of the contraband items constituted a team and conducted two separate raids at the City Railway Station.
The source informed Customs Today that on the arrival of a luggage train, the staff of the Customs Preventive’s ASO carried out thorough search and found a bogey full of betel nuts sacs.
The source also informed that the recovered betel nuts were weighted to sixteen hundred kilograms along with six sacs of Indian-origin gutka and foreign cigarettes worth millions of rupees were also recovered.
The seized smuggled betel nuts, Indian gutka and foreign-origin cigarettes are worth Rs50 million approximately as per the market value in two separate raids in the wee hours at Karachi City railway station.
During the initial investigation, it has also been revealed that the luggage train Bolan departed for Karachi from Lahore and the culprits were using rail route to avoid seizure, the source added.
It is worth mentioning here that last week, the team of Customs Preventive’s ASO under the supervision of Deputy Collector Customs Headquarters Muhammad Faisal reacted over different information received by the Collector Preventive Dr Iftikhar Ahmed and after the successful raids recovered huge quantity of smuggled betel nuts consignment from a train route.
