KARACHI: Customs Taxation and Anti-Smuggling Court Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi has acquitted six suspects who were booked for attempting to smuggle cellular phones in a courier service van.
Earlier the suspects, including Syed Wasif Iqbal s/o Syed Muhammad Iqbal, Saleem Ahmed Baloch s/o Muhammad Siddique, Zubair Ahmed Siddiqui s/o Shabir Ahmed Siddiqui, Adnan Younas s/o Muhammad Younas, Dilawar Abbas s/o Ghulam Abbas and John Kashif s/o Bashir Ghori, were granted bail in the case and had appeared in the court on Thursday along with their lawyers. The court heard the final arguments from both sides and absolved all of them of the charges of smuggling.
On February 13, 2015, the staff of the Anti-Smuggling Organization, Karachi, intercepted a TCS cargo delivery van having registration no KM-0852 loaded with sacks of foreign origin mobile phones. The driver was asked to prove the legal import of the goods but he failed.
As per the FIR, all the suspects were representatives of M/s TCS (Private) Limited and were allegedly involved in handling of smuggled goods in different official capacities. A case was registered against them under Section 156 (1) (8) & (89) of the Customs Act-1969.