HITENDRA KUMAR GADECHA, SHRENIK Vs. COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE application is disposed of by this order.

(2.) THE appellant acquired inter alia 22 Special Import Licences (hereinafter referred to as SILs) from/through one Miss Sunita Goel, who came in possession of the same through Ms Vidya Mahadik, Mr Shrenik Mehta. Mr Shrenik Mehta procured the said licences from Mr one Sanjay Rai, who, in tarn, claimed to have got the same from one Mr Rameshchandra. Before the licences were acquired by the appellants herein, they had verified the fact of the issuance of such licences by the office of the DGTF, who published a monthly bulletin in which the licence numbers were appeared. This was done to confirm that the said licences were issued by the competent jurisdictional authority. Along with the original licences, the appellants also received transfer letters and each such transfer letter bore bank attestation verifying the signature of the transferor. Ex facie from the record, it was submitted that none of the 22 SILs had any endorsement/remark/stamp of cancellation of any mark/sign of defacement. Full payments were made towards consideration for acquiring the said SILs and cheques/demand drafts in favour of the parties were issued.

(3.) TO a question from the Bench, the appellants submitted that payments were issued to a third party as a normal commercial practice as desired by broker of the transferor and it was pointed out that this was not one of the grounds taken by the Revenue or by the adjudicator in the proceedings against the appellant. It appears that on the basis of letter dated 24.2.1998 from a Foreign Trade Development Officer (FTDO for short), it was alleged that 15 out of 22 SILs were no longer valid on the ground that the same were cancelled/defaced. However, prior to this intimation dated 24.2.1998, the consignment of gold or silver imported by the appellant in April and July 1997, which were allowed clearance by the proper officer of Customs from time to time, as validity of the licence was not questioned by such proper officers when the SILs were presented for clearances of the goods imported.