ISLAMABAD: Customs Intelligence has registered a First Information Report (FIR) of theft, an offence under section 380 Pakistan Penal Code, under an inapplicable and wrong law in order to protect its own official involved in theft from the punishment.
According to the content of FIR, Intelligence and Investigation Customs Lahore has registered an FIR against sepoy Ahmad Raza and three other accused persons, namely, Muhammad Sajjad, Muhammad Abdullah and Muhammad Furqan for their involvement in the theft of tyres, clothes and scrap from the custom intelligence ware house situated in Lahore.
As per details, Muhammad Abdullah, Usman and Muhammad Furqan with the connivance of sepoy Ahmad Raza loaded 10 bundles of tyres and one bundle of scrap on vehicle and took away the goods so stolen from the ware house.
On December 13, 2022, the accomplices of the intelligence official Ahmad Raza offered him a 50,000 rupees bribe and with Ahmad Raza’s connivance and facilitation stole four bundles of clothes and scrap from the same state warehouse.
Though the theft of seized, confiscated goods from a customs warehouse is an offence defined in section 378 and punishable under section 380 of Pakistan Penal Code, yet the FIR registered under the irrelevant and inapplicable customs law claims that the accused persons committed an offence under section 156(1), (59), )(62), (77), (81), (82) and 178 of the Customs Act 1969.
Section 156(1)(77) defines the offence which is committed when a person alters or destroys any customs document or does not produce a document or does not answer a question which is required from him by a custom officer.
The directorate of customs intelligence seems to have discovered for the first time in the history of legislative interpretation that the customs law also defines the offence of theft.
The provisions of the customs law invoked in FIR are misused by the senior custom officers to cover up the recurrent thefts of seized goods from the customs warehouses by their own subordinates and these provisions are invoked by them in the FIRs to protect their subordinate officials from the punishment of theft because, if not protected, these subordinate officials risk disclosure of seniors officers’ secrets which the seniors can hardly afford.
The provisions of customs law under which an FIR of theft has been registered define offences which have nothing to do with the offence of theft. Section 156(1)(59)62) invoked in the FIR defines the offence in respect of non duty paid goods deposited by the importers in a public or private warehouse pending payment of duty taxes thereon.
If those importers remove such goods from the warehouse without payment of duty and taxes or otherwise tinker with the goods so deposited, they commit an offence under these provisions of the customs law. In the instant case, seized, confiscated goods have been stolen from the customs department’s official warehouse with which these provisions of customs law do not deal.
Among the provisions of customs law charged in FIR, section 156(1)(81)(82) are the most interesting provisions. These provisions define an offence which is committed when a custom officer duly employed for the prevention of smuggling does not prevent smuggling and instead colludes with the smugglers to make money.
The provisions are very interesting in that the whole custom department is presently doing nothing under the Prevention of Smuggling Act, 1977 and is instead colluding with the smugglers on highways and committing the offence under section 156(1)(8) and is colluding with importers at ports and custom stations and committing the offence under section 156(1)(14A) of the Customs Act, 1969.
It is worth noting that section 156(1)(8)(14A) of the Customs Act deals with the most serious offences under the customs law and provides for the harshest and highest imprisonment for those guilty of these offences.
Section 178 of the Customs Act invoked in FIRÂ deals with the vicarious liability of a person who accompanies another person found in possession of any contraband goods.
It is evident that none of the provisions of customs law charged in FIRÂ define and punish the offence of theft. The senior custom officers have fallen in the habit of registering such meaningless and fraudulent FIRs not without reason.
The reason is that when these FIRs come before competent courts, the courts release the accused persons holding that they have not committed any of the offences charged in the FIR. This is precisely the objective with which senior custom officers commit this illegality.
What the custom officers do by dishonestly registering an FIR under the wrong law has been defined as maladministration under the Federal Tax Ombudsman Ordinance, 2000. Still the custom officers continue this maladministration with impunity.
