NEW DELHI: The Customs Preventive Commissionerate (CPC) has reached an understanding with the Police Department on sharing of intelligence on smuggling of foreign cigarettes to catch the kingpins of the trade.
Now information on seizures of cigarettes is being passed in written form to police, seeking follow-up actions to expose the actual men behind the rackets.
The need for intelligence sharing was agreed upon during a recent meeting of Police Commissioner D. Gautam Sawang with Customs Commissioner S.K. Rahman. Since then, whenever a raid takes place across the State, the officers at CPC are informing police about the seizure and the persons booked under the Customs Act, 1962. The idea is to not confine to Vijayawada city alone.
According to official sources, the CPC, which has entire State n its purview excluding the Visakhapatnam Customs House, has seized 4,650 cartons of non-duty paid foreign cigarettes worth around Rs. 70 lakh since May this year. Foreign brands such as Djarum Black, are easily available across the country as the kingpins of the illegal trade managed to evade arrest by Customs Department. Customs raids are therefore sought to be followed up by police to trace the origins of smuggling.
A CPC official told The Hindu that Information exchange and collaborative work by the Customs and Police Departments would curb cigarette smuggling to a large extent. The partnership started to be implemented in Vijayawada first, as it was a transport hub, adding that it would soon extended to all other areas.
