UNION OF INDIA Vs. LEXUS EXPORTS PRIVATE LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We have heard learned counsel or. both the sides. Dela-condoned. Even at the stage when the goods were seized, the respondent hastened to move a petition under Article 226 before the High court and obtained an interdiction of further proceedings. The learned Single Judge also directed the release of the seized goods. In the appeal preferred by the Revenue, the Revenue was worse-off than it was before-the appeal as the division bench went further and directed that the respondents may even export the goods during the pendency of the statutory adjudication.

(2.) We fail to appreciate how this intervention could have been made the High court in a matter of this kind at that particular stage. Sri Chchidambaram, learned senior counsel, however, submitted that respondents would any event be entitled to have the goods released on payment of fine in lieu confiscation even if there was such confiscation. He said that in that view of the matter even the prospect of an order of confiscation of the goods in the statutory adjudication need not detain the export as the respondents outs always pre-empt confiscation by payment of fome in lieu thereof.

(3.) This submission looks attractive on the face of it but on close scrutiny it is not as solted as it is attract. The proceedings of soizer anddifficult to envisage any right on the part of the respondents from whom they are saized to export them on the basis of a future title they expect to acquire by payment of fine. Learned counsel, however, says that it would earn foreign exchange for the country. But sanctity of legal proceedings cannot be whittled down grounds of such expediency.