Confiscation and penalties under Customs law upheld based on consistent recorded statements and mobile forensic corroboration.

Challenge concerned sustainability of confiscation, penalties and related monetary demands under the Customs regime; the court relied on consistent recorded statements implicating the petitioner, mobile phone forensic data corroborating communications about procurement and carriage of gold, and collateral material including statements of others and non-cooperation, to connect the petitioner to the contravention. Applying the statutory scheme governing confiscation, redemption, penalty, duty and interest and offences under the Customs and foreign-exchange regulations, the court sustained the impugned confiscation and penalty orders and dismissed the petition.

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Issues: Whether the orders of confiscation and imposition of penalties and other consequential demands under the Customs Act, 1962 and related regulations against the petitioner are sustainable.

Analysis: The recorded statements under Section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962 relating to the passenger were consistent across multiple dates and implicated the petitioner as having acted in concert with the passenger and a money exchanger in respect of carriage and receipt of smuggled gold. Forensic analysis of the passenger's mobile phone corroborated communication linking the petitioner to arrangements for purchasing and bringing gold into India. Collateral material, including statements of other implicated persons and conduct such as non-cooperation with summons, was considered together with the statutory scheme comprising provisions dealing with confiscation, redemption, imposition of penalty, duty demand and interest, and offences attracting Sections 111, 112, 112A, 114, 114A, 114AA, 117, 124, 125, 28 and 28AA of the Customs Act, 1962 and Section 13 of the Foreign Exchange Management (Export & Import of Currency) Regulations, 1999. The available evidence was held sufficient to connect the petitioner to the contravention and to support orders of confiscation, penalty and related monetary demands.

Conclusion: The impugned orders imposing confiscation, penalties and consequential demands against the petitioner are sustainable and the petition is dismissed; decision is against the petitioner and in favour of the revenue.

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