LUDHIANA: The directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI), Ludhiana zonal unit, and its regional unit of Amritsar seized a 40-foot container that was declared to be containing mobile back covers worth Rs 15 lakh.
Instead, the container had other goods like sports shoes of leading brands, earphones and button cells, among other things, valued at over Rs 1 crore.
A Ludhiana-based firm had imported the container and it had arrived at an inland container depot near Kila Raipur.
Highly-placed sources in the department said on a tip-off, a team of the department, under the leadership of additional director general Nitin Saini, was tracking this container for the past two months after it departed from China.
The team had code named the operation as MASK (Mobile accessories and sports equipment).
As per the declaration made by the importer, the container had two lakh pieces of PVC mobile back cover worth Rs 15 lakh.
Sources said under the impression that authorities will not suspect anything wrong, importer had filed the bill of entry of this consignment late, but on Monday DRI officials examined it and found 8,500 sports shoes of various brands, 2.10 lakh earphones, 10,000 tempered glass screens for mobile phones, 3.8 lakh button cells and 35,000 battery covers. In another attempt to make authorities believe that the container was full of mobile back covers, the importer had stuffed 95,000 of these too in the container, but these were found to be undervalued and wrongly-declared.
Source said till now the approximate value of the confiscated goods has been estimated to be over Rs 1 crore, but the final value would be decided soon. Meanwhile, the importer has been summoned by the department.