KARACHI, July 24: The Sindh High Court allowed a petition moved by a shipping company on Friday and ordered the customs authorities to release its impounded containers immediately.
The shipping company submitted that two of its containers were impounded in October 2001 when the goods they were carrying were seized by the customs authorities.
The importer was allowed to redeem the seized consignment on payment of duties and fines but the containers remained impounded. The company’s requests and notices failed to elicit a positive response and it approached the high court in May 2005.
Representing the petitioner company, Advocate Khalid Mehmood Siddiqui argued that no confiscation order in respect of the containers was issued by the authorities. Secondly, a container cannot be impounded under the provisions of Section 157(I) of the Customs Act, which provided only for seizure of the ‘package’ in which the goods were packed.
A division bench held after hearing the two sides that the expression ‘any package’ used in the Customs Act provision did not cover containers. It applied to ‘packages’ and other such material. Besides, neither the petitioner company was a party to the confiscation proceedings before the customs collector nor any order for confiscation of its containers was passed.
The bench observed that according to the investigation officer of the case, the carriers on which the containers were transported had already been released by the customs. Allowing the petition, it asked the authorities to release the impounded containers without further delay.
SHC DIRECTIVES: The Sindh High Court asked the owners of a disputed plot in Defence on Saturday not to create third party interest pending hearing of an application moved by other claimants.
Syed Zakir Hussain and his three sons alleged through Advocate Ziaul Haq Makhdoom that plaintiffs Abdul Hafeez and Mohammad Sabir unlawfully occupied a plot (No 140/1, 31st Street, Phase VI, DHA) inherited by them through Ms Anwar Jahan, deceased wife of Zakir Hussain, through a power and sub-power of attorney while they were abroad. They requested an interim order to restrain the plaintiff respondents, who approached the court for specific performance of a sale agreement.
