Customs Officers forge documents to steal Plasma TV
A private firm in Kuwait sends a plasma TV to a lady in Kerala as a gift on the occasion of her house warming. The Cochin Airport Customs promptly slapped a heavy duty and penalty; with the result, the lady abandoned the TV. What should the Customs do now? Perhaps seize/confiscate it and keep it in the Customs warehouse for sale to public?
But the Assistant Commissioner had a brilliant idea. He along with a lady Superintendent and a preventive officer prepared a forged baggage declaration and cleared the TV on payment of a duty of Rs. 4635 on a value of Rs. 30,000. The original value was supposed to be Rs. 91,000.
Well, the news got to CBI and they promptly registered a case against the three officers.
What happened to the TV? The CBI recovered it from the residence of the Assistant Commissioner! The Assistant Commissioner got a TV worth 90,000 for about Rs. 5000 with help from two of his officers and now all of them will go through hell for the next ten years - all for a paltry plasma.
Though the craze for phoren goods has come down considerably, of late, latest models of TVs which cost a couple of lakhs in India, which are available at less than half the price abroad, are being routinely brought in by passengers - even students coming from countries like USA. Somehow, even the rich Indians are miserly when it comes to paying Customs duty at airports. They pay small bribes to Customs officers and clear these TVs and brag about it with their friends and relatives and some of them even post details of the amounts of bribes to be paid, on social networks. Even mighty politicians and crusading journalists smuggle in these high value TVs - even without those small bribes!
Recently somebody posted this on a website:
I was carrying a 46-inch LED TV from Singapore and hoping to pay around Rs. 8000 as custom duty (as per my earlier discussions with friends) but the group of fellows (including a lady) [Customs officers] there almost intimidated saying I got to pay 27,000 and settled down for 12,000 at last. I was naive enough to request them for a receipt and they laughed. It made me realize I am in India after all, my home .