8 held for smuggling sewing machine needles from China

Chennai: Eight were arrested for smuggling sewing machine needles from China, evading customs duty by Chennai customs preventive officers on Wednesday. The smugglers were arrested under the offences of mis-declaration and concealment of goods, they said.

Officers were informed by a specific intelligence, about the heavy import of needles imposed with anti-dumping duty. The officers conducted a search based on the information at a freight company and intercepted a container that was declared to be carrying “shirt pin, sealed rope for garments”, “Christmas decoration lights” and more. On examination, sewing machine needles were found concealed in the consignment along with the items declared. The officers seized 2.87 crore of needles valued to a total of '3.84 crore, a release said.

Anti-dumping duty is imposed on certain items from specific exporting countries to bring the price of the item close to the price in the native. This scheme was introduced to protect the indigenous trade from the unfair competition of exported items that are dumped into the markets at a very low price. In the case of the needles, Government had imposed anti-dumping duty at '1.54 per needle ('154732 per lakh needles) in addition to normal duty at 21.24 per cent. This was notified in the Aad Notification 31/2017 dated June 22, .2017. Upon investigation, the importer of the needles was identified as M/s SLV Trading Company owned by a Chennai based importer. The consignment was seized for mis-declaration and for importing without an appropriate customs duty under the provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.

S.L.Vijay, the IEC holder and Mahaveer Kumar Jain,  have been arrested for their alleged role in the smuggling of sewing machine needles. Later the seized containers that had been placed under the safe custody of M/s Thirurani Logistics, had reportedly gone missing. According to sources, the containers were removed illegally by furnishing forged documents. The officers were informed about the removal of the containers and immediate follow-up searchers were set-up to trace the stolen containers. The goods were later recovered from N.K. Logistics general warehouse godown and the container from a dumping yard. Uka Ram behind the  removal of the goods from CFS was also arrested by customs.