KARACHI: Customs Court Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi on Tuesday directed customs officials in Lahore to produce the suspect, Babar Sultan, Chief Finance Officer of M/s Digicom (Q-Mobile) Trading before the court, who was booked for attempting to smuggle more than 78,000 mobile phones in the garb of LED lights.
It needs to be mentioned here that on the last date of hearing, the Lahore customs officials had moved an application for his custody and pleaded that they need custody of the suspect in a case registered in Lahore.
During the hearing, the court was informed that the suspect was not moved back to Karachi from Lahore, therefore, the court directed the customs authorities to produce him on the next date of hearing.
Earlier, court had recalled his interim pre-arrest bail, during the hearing, officials of the customs department had argued that prosecution has concrete evidences against the M/s Digicom Trading and above mentioned suspect played key role in this scam, therefore, court may rejected his bail.
After hearing the arguments, court had recalled interim pre-arrest bail which was granted earlier by this court. After recalling his bail, customs officials arrested him and sent him to customs custody.
On last date of hearing, suspect appeared before the court along with his counsel who moved an application for after arrest bail and argued that his client is innocent and was been falsely implicated in this case, therefore court may granted his bail, after the arguments, court granted him interim bail.
Earlier, investigation officer of Intelligence and investigation-FBR informed the court that on a credible information, a team of Intelligence and Investigation-FBR raided at Bungalow no 107/1 lane 10, Kheaban-Rahan DHA Karachi and during the search recovered 78,160 foreign origin mobile phones from 3908 cartons.
He further informed the court that after formalities officials of the Intelligence and Investigation-FBR seized mobile phones and shifted at investigation office and notice under section 171 also issued to the M/s Digicom Trading Company.
According to the prosecution was registered for violation of under section 2 (s) 16, 32 (1) & (2) 32A, 79, 80, 157 and 178 of the customs act, 1969 read with import policy order 2016 punishable under section 156 (1) (8) (89) (9) (9) (14) (14A) (43) (44) (45) & 156 (2) ibid read with section 3, 6, 7A, 33, 34 of the sales tax act, 1990, further read with section 148 of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001.
