Mere filing of revision petitions before higher officials without obtaining stay of release orders passed by appellate authorities cannot be cited as a reason to deny return of gold confiscated by Customs officials from inbound passengers at airports, the Madras High Court Bench here has said.
Justice M.V. Muralidaran said the officials were bound to implement release orders passed by appellate authorities unless they had been stayed by officer empowered to revise the orders since a long delay in release of goods could reduce their market value to the detriment of the importers.
He made the observation while passing identical but separate orders on 10 writ petitions in which orders were reserved in the Principal Seat of the High Court in Chennai on July 27 and delivered at its Bench here as he had been presiding over the proceedings here since September 6.
The writ petitioners before the court included three passengers from whom 31 gold bars weighing 3,100 grams were confiscated on their return from Singapore. Similarly, 1,389 grams of gold had been seized from five passengers from Dubai, 500 grams from a passenger from Kuwait, and 60 grams from Sri Lanka.
The judge pointed out that a Joint Commissioner of Customs had confiscated gold bars and jewellery from the writ petitioners at Chennai International Airport between March 2014 and February 2015 under Section 111(d) of the Customs Act, 1962 and Section 3 (3) of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992.
However, the same officer allowed the petitioners to redeem and re-export the goods on payment of redemption fine, which ran to a few lakh rupees and differed from case to case depending upon the quantity of gold confiscated from each of the 10 petitioners, apart from penalty imposed under Section 112(a) of the Customs Act.
All the petitioners had challenged the orders passed by the Joint Commissioner before the Commissioner of Customs (Appeals) who modified the orders passed on different dates and reduced considerably the quantum of redemption fine as well as penalty imposed by the Joint Commissioner.
Yet, an Assistant Commissioner of Customs at the airport refused to return the valuables forcing the petitioners to approach the court. Opposing the writ petitions, a counsel appearing for the Assistant Commissioner claimed that the gold could not be returned since the department had preferred revision petitions against the Commissioner’s orders.
He contended once a revision had been filed, the passengers should either approach the revision authority seeking return of their properties or wait for the latter to take a decision on the revision applications moved by the department. He said the writ petitions were liable to be dismissed as not maintainable.
Disagreeing with him, Mr. Justice Muralidaran directed the Assistant Commissioner to release the goods in accordance with the order passed by the appellate authority for many reasons including his failure to explain the reason for not having obtained a stay of the Commissioner’s order.
