KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday issued notice to the director general of the Directorate General of Transit Trade, Collector of Customs (Preventive) Port Qasim, and others to submit their comments on a petition filed by M/s Port Connection (Private) Limited, seeking to unblock its national tax number (NTN).
The Port Connection also asked the SHC to quash two FIRs registered against it for its alleged involvement in pilferage and theft of the US Army reverse cargo and unblock its NTN so that it could resume its business activities.
Advocate Amir Mansoob Qureshi filed an application on behalf of the petitioner, seeking urgent hearing of the matter. Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, who headed a division bench, issued notice to the respondents and set September 8 for the hearing.
According to the content of the FIRs, the Directorate General of Transit Trade had lodged two FIRs pertaining to pilferages of US Army reverse cargo in 22 containers during their transit from Torkham to Karachi port.
The cargo was declared to contain power generators with transformer and equipment for transit to Karachi port for export to Dubai. When the containers were examined physically at Karachi port they were found empty.
During course of examination, shipper and custom seals were found intact. However, the cargo declared in the Invoice and packing list was not found in the containers.
Subsequently two FIRs were registered against bonded carrier M/s. Port Connection (Pvt) Ltd and the authorized agents M/s Peerzada Service International, M/s Ghani’s International and M/s Multitrans Logistics (Pvt) Ltd.
