MULTAN: Collectorate of Customs Preventive seized huge quantity of betel nuts worth Rs70 million during raid in a private warehouse located in the Lodhran area.
Sources told Customs Today that Collector Muhammad Saleem received credible information that bulk quantity of contraband smuggled goods were concealed in a private warehouse located in the Jalalpur Road Kallu Wala near Lodhran.
Collector formed special team comprising Inspector Abdul Samad, Inspector Muhammad Umair and others to take action against smuggled goods. Customs anti-smuggling squad raided the private warehouse located in Kallu Wala where they found huge quantity of smuggled betel nuts which were dumped for supply in South Punjab region.
Customs team obtained search warrants from local magistrate to seek permission for the inspection of said warehouses located in the Kallu wala. Multan Customs raided warehouses where they recovered huge quantity of foreign origin betel nuts were dumped at godown. The recovered betel nuts were packed in the different bags.
Smugglers were used to supply these smuggled betel nuts to different retailers of South Punjab especially in Multan. Multan Customs cordoned out the said area during their anti-smuggling action to avoid any unwanted situation. Local police was also called at the spot to avoid any clash during action.
Customs teams recovered 725 bags of betel nuts and their net weight was 25 tons different jute bags of betel nuts which were lying in the private warehouse. Anti-smuggling team’s shifted the said betel nuts in state ware house Customs on three different trucks.
Additional Collector Syed Ali Abbas Gardezi and Deputy Collector Maqbool Ahmed Baloch supervised the whole operation. Customs anti-smuggling squads showed exceptional performance in the month of January due to active participation of field staff and they have already detected several illegal warehouses of cigarettes and High Speed Diesel in successful different operations.
The values of seized goods were Rs70 million. Customs teams started investigation against recovered betel nuts for further investigations and against owner of warehouse are still under process for legal action.
