KARACHI: The Special Court of Customs Taxation and Anti-Smuggling on Monday directed the investigation officer to submit within two weeks an interim charge-sheet in two cases pertaining to the pilferage of NATO/ISAF cargo.
Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi granted the request of investigation officer Akbar Ahmed for giving some time to submit the charge-sheet. The court put off the hearing till January 21.
At the outset, suspects Shahid Ansari, Waseem Ahmed, Bilal Ansari, and Ali Shahid, the proprietors and managers of M/s Bilal Logistics (Private) Limited, appeared before the court. All the accused have been granted interim bail by the Sindh High Court against surety bonds of Rs 1 million each in two case.
According to the prosecution, Pakistan Customs’ Anti-Smuggling Organization has booked M/s Bilal Logistics for pilfering over 400 containers meant for NATO/ISAF forces stationed in Afghanistan. According to the content of an FIR, information was received regarding massive pilferage of Afghan Transit cargo said to be for NATO/ISAF forces in Afghanistan. And, a well planned strategy was chalked out to materialize the said information in a befitting manner. Accordingly, a team of customs officers and sepoys under the supervision of Syed Muhammad Raza Naqvi, Assistant Collector-HQ was constituted to act upon the information.
The team so constituted raided on a private yard of M/s Bilal Associates at Plot No K-24, Trans Lyari Hawks Bay road Karachi on 9-12-2015 along with ACP-HQ after completion of all legal formalities i.e. service of notice under section 163 of the Customs Act, 1969. The inspection of the yard and examination of the goods was conducted in the presence of two musheers namely Abdul Malik Baloch (SPO Customs) and Muhammad Ejaz (PO Customs) which led to the recovery of huge quantity of containers lying/housed for indefinite long period while 26 containers were found cut into pieces and 16 bottom of the containers were also found lying abundantly there.
Moreover, 2 heavy power generators were also found lying on flat container in the yard. A persona laptop was also recovered from the office of the yard which was taken into possession and was switched on which transpired the retrieval of data of 168 containers. The details of these containers have been referred to M/s PRAL, Custom House, Karachi for provision of description and other details to ascertain the quantity and value of the goods so pilfered in this case. The goods as mentioned above have been seized and notice under section 171 of the Customs Act, 1969 issued to the owner and manager of M/s Bilal Associate Yard accordingly.
