DRI to auction huge stock of foreign-made cigarettes

SURAT: A huge quantity of foreign-made cigarettes seized from the Adani Group’s Hazira port will be auctioned by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) following the chief judicial magistrate’s order on Tuesday.
The DRI had made a massive seizure of foreign-made cigarettes worth nearly Rs 24 crore, which was illegally imported from Dubai to Hazira port in the last week of March.Termed as the biggest haul of foreign cigarettes in the country, the DRI had seized four containers loaded with the foreign cigarettes of three brands. These cigarettes attract 90% customs duty. The cigarettes were brought from Dubai, DRI sources said.
The high rate of customs & excise duty on imported cigarettes makes smuggling a lucrative option. In the recent budget, the excise duty on cigarette was hiked by 25%.
The DRI had arrested Mehul Pujara, a representative of the Gandhidham-based import firm, who revealed that the smuggled cigarettes were meant to be supplied to the retailers in Daman, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The cigarettes brands are strawberry flavoured Luvin Fresh, clove-flavoured Djarum Black and Gudang Garam.
A senior DRI officer said, “The cigarettes are flavoured ones and they could perish if kept for a longer period and could not fetch value during the auction. However, we had submitted an application with the court to handover the mudamal so that we could auction the cigarettes on time and deposite the money with the government’s exchequer. Now that the court has sanctioned the release of mudamal, we will be doing the auction anytime soon”