2011 (6) TMI 239

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....y under Sec.112 (a) of the Customs Act, 1962 (hereinafter called as 'Act' for brevity) and reduced the penalty from Rs.50,000/- to Rs.5,000/-.   2. The material facts leading up to this appeal are as follows:   The officers of the Customs Headquarters Preventive, Central Intelligence Unit (CIU), Bangalore had gathered specific intelligence to the effect that M/s Surya Light, New Delhi (importer) had imported Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) from Sri Lanka through Inland Container Depot (ICD), Bangalore but had misdeclared the country of origin of the goods in order to avail the benefit of exemption under the Indo Sri Lankan Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) and also to evade the payment of Anti-Dumping Duty leviable on the CFL imp....

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....ant who is an employee in the respondent - Department as Customs Appraiser was incharge of processing the bill of entry, but for his convenience the bill of entry could not have been replaced or tampered. Wherefore, show cause notice was issued on 30th April 2004 to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed. After reply was submitted by appellant original order was passed after appreciating the statements on record and also the documents that were seized which clearly show that in the original invoice the place of origin of goods is shown as China and in the invoice which was processed by the appellant the country of origin column was left blank and the rate of duty was nil as in view of the agreement between India and Srilanka tha....

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....le Supreme Court has laid down the scope of appreciation of evidence wherein the accused had been charged of having committed offence punishable under Sec,302 of IPC. He has taken us through the statements of the CHA and the employee of the consignee and submitted that there is inconsistency in their evidence and contradiction in their evidence and there was no material to prove connivance or any offensive act on the part of the appellant for imposing penalty.   7. Learned counsel appearing for the respondent with reference to the original records submitted that appreciation of evidence by the Tribunal and the original authority is justified and does not suffer from any error or irregularity as to call for interference in this appea....