Nagpur: In the last couple of years, to and for traffic from city’s Dr Babasaheb International Airport has grown manifold and so has the headache of customs authorities.
In the last three years, the Air Customs Unit has recovered over 5,670 gms of gold valued at Rs1.44 crore. In the same period, its sleuths caught about 2,562 passengers for evading the customs duty and collected over Rs3.64 crore from them, an RTI reply has informed.
The reply by Dilip Shewre, assistant commissioner at Air Customs Unit’s Customs Duty Department in Civil Lines, further informed that they had taken action against 37 persons for illegally bringing goods from abroad when they travelled there.
The query in this regard was asked by RTI activist Abhay Kolarkar, who also sought to know on offences lodged by the unit against repeated offenders and number of cases pending in the courts. He also demanded information number of flyers actually prosecuted in such offences on complaints filed by the Air Customs Unit. Shewre, however, didn’t answer any of on these queries.
The assistant commissioner informed that largest haul of gold was recovered in 2015-16 with recovery of 4556.6 gms in four cases, which collectively worth over Rs1.11 crore. In 2016-17, the unit recovered 699.30 gms in just one case which worth Rs21.46 lakh. Last year, two cases were unearthed where 414.52 gms of yellow metal was seized which worth Rs11.77 lakh.
In 2015-16, the unit sleuths caught about 595 passengers for evading customs duty and collected Rs1.04 crore from them. In 2016-17, there is jump in number of passengers to 1,015 who were caught for not paying the duty and were fined with Rs1.147 crore. In 2017-18, they caught 952 flyers and collected Rs1.25 crore.
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