KARACHI, Aug 6: The Sindh High Court disallowed on Wednesday withdrawal of writ petitions by betel-nut importers against detention of their allegedly contaminated consignments by the customs department and directed the latter not to release the nuts till its judgment.

Dismissing withdrawal applications by the petitioners, a division bench comprising Justices S. Ahmed Sarwana and M. Mujibullah Siddiqui observed that the petitions fell in the category of public interest litigation and could not be disposed of as withdrawn unilaterally in view of the importance of the issues involving public health. The petitions, filed in June 2003, would come up for hearing on August 20 as scheduled.

The petitioners said in their applications that “in view of further developments in the matter and new facts and additional grounds of the case’, they should be allowed to withdraw their petitions unconditionally with no order as to costs.

They also maintained that the purpose for which the petitions were filed had become ‘infructuous’ and the petitioners were not interested in pursuing the matter. The petitioners were likely to reach ‘an amicable’ (out-of-court) settlement with the customs department.

What would happen to the detained consignments? Would they be released? the bench asked the petitioners’ counsel as the applications came up for preliminary hearing on Wednesday. The counsel had no specific or convincing reply and the bench addressed the same question to Deputy Attorney-General Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui and Advocate Yawar Farooqui, who have been appearing for the respondent federation and the customs department, respectively. They said they had no instructions from the respondents.

The petitioners said they had opened letters of credit for betel-nut imports in March 2003 and their case was different from those who ordered identical imports in December 2002. They said the customs got samples from the consignments examined by the HEJ Research Institute laboratory, which found only seven per cent of the nuts infested. About 93 per cent of the samples were found to have low microbiological load, which was below the specific limit prescribed for food items.

The customs department, the petitioners contended, had no authority to examine imported edibles for the purpose of their fitness for human consumption, which was the function of other departments and agencies under the law. One of the petitioners said he was suffering a loss of Rs20,000 per day due to the detention of his consignment.

The customs rejoined that under the Import Policy Order, 2002, they were empowered, rather legally obliged, to see whether any imported edibles were fit for human consumption. Contaminated edibles fell in the negative list of goods whose import was banned. To determine whether the suspected imports were really unfit, they sent samples to the HEJ and PCSIR laboratories which found them ‘infested’ and not fit for human consumption.

The bench had ordered on the last date a clubbing together of all the petitions and appeals against the single judges decisions for a consolidated hearing to facilitate an authoritative pronouncement finally resolving the controversy. Varying orders had been made by different judges. One order required retesting of the samples to ascertain whether the consignments were only partially unfit for human consumption. Another order, which has been challenged, called for crushing of the nuts to sawdust for use in manufacturing processes.

The Pakistan Medical Association and other non-governmental organizations, meanwhile, joined in the controversy and sought to be impleaded in the proceedings to safeguard public interest.