Customs seizes smuggled foreign cloth worth Rs65m

Personnel of the Pakistan Customs, Collectorate of Customs Enforcement Karachi, foiled an attempt to smuggle a large quantity of foreign cloth worth Rs65 million into the country under the guise of used clothes.

Syed Irfan Ali, a spokesman for the customs, said on Monday that Collector Customs Enforcement Moinuddin Ahmed Wani received information that an attempt would be made to smuggle foreign cloth smuggled from Balochistan into the country under the guise of used clothes.

In the light of these instructions, orders were issued to various teams of the ASO to closely monitor containers going inland from Karachi and check suspicious containers and the ASO staff was instructed to increase patrolling and remain on alert

A patrol team of the Anti-Smuggling Organization stopped a trailer registration number JP-8287 on the RCD Highway, which was loaded with a 40-foot container, and the driver was asked for documents. The truck driver presented the transporter's bill, which indicated used cloth and which was booked from Karachi to Lahore.

The patrol team opened the container and checked it based on the weight shown in the documents and the information obtained earlier. Instead of used cloth, new foreign cloth rolls and bundles were found inside.

The team took the trailer to the ASO warehouse, where an examination showed various types of foreign smuggled cloth 65 million, including 2,170 kilos of old clothes, sofa cloth 2,500kg, J-card fabric 11,755kg, embroidered net fabric 2,600kg and embroidered dyed textile fabric 1,400kg.