Page 299 - ELT_15th July 2020_Vol 373_Part 2

2020 ] AGARWAL INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION LTD. v. COMMR. OF CUS., MANGALORE 281
that in respect of these shipments, the vessel has resorted to
misdeclaration of country of origin of the goods as UAE by using
doctored documents. That one such consignment of bitumen loaded
per vessel MT CLAYTON II has been scheduled for arrival at the
Karwar Port during last week of February, 2014.
(ii) Verification of relevant documents filed with Customs, Karwar per-
taining to voyages made to the Karwar Port by the subject vessel
MT CLAYTON II indicated that in all, three Bills of Entry for Ware-
housing under Section 46 of the Customs Act, 1962 have been hith-
erto filed in the current fiscal for import of bitumen parcels in the
said vessel, as detailed below :

Sl. Vessel BOE (Into IGM No. & Quantity Importer
No. Bond) No. & date (MT)
date
1. CLAYTON II 14/16-1-2014 03/16-1-2014 2776.436 Agarwal
VOYAGE NO. 1 Industrial
Corpora-
tion Ltd.
2. CLAYTON II 32/4-2-2014 07/3-2-2014 2799.719 Bitumen
VOYAGE NO. 2 Corpora-
tion Ltd.
3. CLAYTON II 60/25-2-2014 13/25-2-2014 2788.645 Agarwal
VOYAGE NO. 3 Industrial
Corpora-
tion Ltd.

(iii) It was alleged that the assessment of goods covered under these
three into-bond Bills of Entry were made provisional for subjecting
the goods to chemical test as well as for want of original documents.
It is apparently noticed that in respect of all these three bitumen
shipments, the load port was declared to be ‘Sharjah’ and the coun-
try of origin was declared to be ‘UAE’ in the relevant im-
port/shipping documents. It was apparently noticed that for all
these three voyages, the Master of the vessel MT CLAYTON II has
appointed M/s. Marinelinks Shipping Agencies, Opposite Karwar
Port Office, Baithkol, Karwar-581302, as the steamer agents of the
vessel, as envisaged under Section 148 of the Customs Act, 1962.
(iv) Verification of the records further indicated that the said vessel MT
CLAYTON II had already performed two voyages to the Karwar
Port during January, 2014 and early part of February, 2014 and had
separately delivered two parcels of bitumen under IGM No. 03/
16-1-2014 filed in respect of Voyage No. 1 and IGM No. 07/3-2-2014
filed in respect of Voyage No. 2.
(v) It was discreetly gathered that the subject vessel MT CLAYTON II,
in its Voyage No. 3 declared to be loaded with 2776.436 MT of bi-
tumen from Port Khalid, Sharjah, UAE was scheduled to call at the
Karwar port on 28-2-2014 for discharge of cargo into the bonded
warehouse storage tank No. 6 of the importers M/s. Agarwal Indus-
trial Corporation Ltd., situated in the premises of M/s. Tropicana
Liquid Storage Pvt. Ltd., Baithkol, Karwar. Accordingly, soon after
its arrival at the Karwar Port in the evening of 28-2-2014, the officers
of Customs visited on board the vessel MT CLAYTON II, Voyage

EXCISE LAW TIMES  15th July 2020  299