KARACHI: The Special Customs and Taxation Court has directed the customs officer, investigating a case pertaining to alleged smuggling of electronic gadgets by TCS employees, to submit the charge sheet within 10 days. Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi adjourned the hearing of case until September 8.
According to the prosecution, the customs authorities had recovered a huge quantity of electronic gadgets, including costly mobile phones, watches, memory cards and USBs worth Rs 20 million from a TCS Van. It was alleged that these gadgets were illegally smuggled into the country without payment of duties and taxes. Subsequently an FIR was registered against six suspect employees of TCS under the customs laws.
At the outset, the counsel for the accused submitted that his clients were not involved in smuggling of gadgets as they were transporting the consignment on behalf of shippers and the courier cannot be asked to produce the import documents.
He requested the court to adjourn the case enabling him to produce the copy of the judgments passed by the Lahore and Rawalpindi Customs Court in the cases of same nature in which they acquitted the TCS employees.
He further prayed to the court to direct intelligence officer to submit final charge-sheet at the earliest so that he could know the role assigned to the suspect employees in alleged smuggling of goods.
The judge observed that earlier on June 22, the court had directed the officer to submit charge-sheet within 15 days but he failed to comply with its order. When asked why he failed to obey its order, IO Arif Maqsood asked the judge to give some time to complete the charge-sheet The court directed the IO to submit challan within ten days.
