Air passenger trying to smuggle 30 liquor bottles held

Personnel of the Pakistan Customs have arrested a passenger trying to smuggle foreign liquor worth hundreds of thousands of rupees into the country.

A spokesman for the Customs said the arrest was made at the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi by the Customs Collectorate. A passenger, Muhammad Saqib, who arrived in Karachi on Emirates Airlines flight EK 600 from Dubai, was trying to get out of the lounge using the green channel when the staff deployed there stopped him on suspicion and scanned his luggage to find liquor in his suitcase. The bottles were identified on which the passenger's luggage was transferred to the Customs Examination Counter and 30 bottles of high-quality liquor were recovered from his suitcase.

The value of the 30 recovered bottles of liquor was estimated to be Rs800,000. Action is being taken under the Customs Act. The Collectorate of Customs Enforcement Karachi and Quetta is successfully conducting anti-smuggling operations in line with the directives of the federal government. The performance in the last 45 days resulted in the seizure of smuggled goods worth Rs2.7 billion in 278 successful operations. The goods included drugs, Iranian diesel, betel nuts, gutka, dry milk, non-customs paid vehicles, cosmetics, plastic grains and electronics. They were seized at various checkpoints, godowns and other locations.

In a significant development, a modern control room at the Collectorate of Customs Enforcement Quetta has recently been established to monitor the movement of vehicles along different routes by representatives from the Frontier Corps (FC), Intelligence Bureau (IB), police and other law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the Collectorate has fully implemented the newly developed Strack (online verification system) by the Federal Board of Revenue for monitoring the movement of essential commodities and movement of sugar in the province of Balochistan.