2017 (1) TMI 405

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....ustoms (Appeals), JNCH. Penalty was imposed for alleged involvement in attempt to smuggle out 6.9 metric tons of red sanders in containers entered for export 'lock washers' in the shipping bills filed through the appellant in its capacity as customs house agent licenced under Customs House Agent Regulations, 2004. The other two appellants in the challenge to the impugned order are individuals imposed with penalties. 2. It is not in dispute that M/s Skylark Travels Pvt Ltd did file the shipping bill pertaining to the export. It is also admitted that this consignment was brought to them by one Flavian Walter D'Souza, a logistics operator, who regularly referred his clients to them as he was not a licenced customs house agent. M....

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....ipping bill and the entry into the export area. The role of a 'customs house agent' in relation to export commences with the filing of the shipping bill and is completed when the consignment is handed over to the agent of the carrier. In the absence of an allegation, or a finding, that the substitution occurred during this window, responsibility cannot be fastened on the agent. 5. I find that the original authority has acknowledged that none of the perpetrators of the offence have implicated the agent in any act of omission or commission in connection with the contraband. It is also on record that those who provided the documents to the appellant have also not been issued with notice in connection with proceedings for confiscatio....

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....s house agent rendered the goods liable for confiscation. To link up carriage of contraband with failure to ascertain the identity of exporter or obtain the authorization is to infer that such ascertainment or obtaining would have prevented the attempt to smuggle. Nor is it credible to infer that failure to do so has encouraged the perpetrators. If enforcement were so ludicrously simple, the immense manpower resource appointed under the Customs Act, 1962 can be done away with. If deviations from the code of conduct enumerated in the Regulations were to be dealt with as abetting of smuggling, such provisions in the Regulations are redundant and a mere reference to section 112 and section 114 of Customs would have sufficed instead of the elab....