- (1.) BY this application dated 27. 7. 2005 under Section 401/482, prayer has been made by the Additional Director General, Directorate of Revenue intelligence of the Government of India for setting aside the order dated 29. 6. 2005 passed by the learned Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, calcutta in Customs Case No. D. R. I-60-KOL/2004 under Section 135/132 of the Customs Act. The O. Ps herein are four accused persons of the case.
(2.) CERTAIN facts of the case in brief will not be out of place. An intelligence was received by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence that some kolkata based export oriented units including Kuil Trading (P) Limited and hazel Traders Private Limited were indulging in fake exports to Bangladesh through Ghojadanga Land Customs Station. They were importing duty free goods and fraudulently diverted the same in the local market and instead of utilising the imported duty free goods in the manufacture of export goods they were making false and fabricated documents showing fake exports purporting to show fulfillment of corresponding export obligations and thereby evading a huge amount of customs duty. Search was conducted on 28. 7. 2004 at various places including the office premises of one Godhan Infotech (Pvt.) Limited and a substantial number of incriminating documents were recovered and seized. The O. P. No. 2, Manu Kapoor was examined and he had admitted that duty free goods were procured from Special Economic Zone were exported from the godown of Kuil Trading Private Limited and Hazel Traders Private limited and he had despatched the goods on the basis of challans provided to him by the O. P. No. 3. The copies of the bills of export bearing the identical numbers collected from Ghojadanga LCS revealed that those bills of export pertained to completely different export consignments of different exporters. Similarly, the O. P. No. 3 was examined and it was found that all the export documents were false and fabricated. Examination of the O. P. No. 4 also revealed the same thing. According to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, total amount of Customs duty evaded by the accused persons was to the tune of Rs. 76 crores. The accused persons were arrested and were granted bail. Since the Director of Revenue Intelligence had to carry out enquiry/investigation at various stages with various persons it could be a protracted one and time consuming and such enquiry/investigation were still in progress. On 15. 6. 2005, the O. P. No. 3 filed an application praying for stopping of all proceedings. According to the complainant the Limitation act has got no manner of application to offences under the Customs Act which are economic offences included in the schedule referred to in clause (1) of Section 2 of the Economic Offence (Inapplicability of Limitation) Act, 1974. There is no fixed period of limitation for filing the complaint in respect of the offences punishable under the Customs act, 1962. The learned Magistrate by the order impugned stopped further investigation and discharged the accused persons illegally without due regard to the provisions of the law.
(3.) I have gone through the order dated 29. 6. 2005 passed by the learned Chief Metropolitan Magistrate. I have heard Mr. S. K. Kapoor, learned senior Advocate appearing for the petitioner and Mr. Sekhar Basu, learned senior Advocate appearing for the O. Ps.;