Customs foils smuggling bid at Jinnah Terminal
A general view of the Jinnah International Airport Karachi where evacuees from Afghanistan will stop by for further travel to other countries. PHOTO: FILE
Pakistan Customs has seized contrabands worth Rs61.8 million during a major operation at the Jinnah International Airport on Friday and took four passengers into custody who brought the consignment from Dubai, UAE.
The passengers, who arrived in Karachi on the Airblue flight A111, have been identified as Azhar Iqbal, Muhammad Faisal, Amjad Gul, and Zal Noreen.
Customs officials' suspicion led to a thorough checking of the passengers' luggage with the help of scanners, which yielded an array of contrabands.
The seizures included 27 laptops, 5kg of cosmetics, 36 iPhones, 37 watches, 65 iPads, 1,250 computer RAM modules, 472 cartons of foreign cigarettes, 59 Apple pencils, 97 Airpods, and 21 MacBooks - all of which were being smuggled into the country without the payment of duty and taxes.
One of the arrested passengers initially claimed to be a former MNA. However, subsequent verification revealed this claim to be false. As a result, all four passengers were apprehended, and a case was registered against them under the Customs Act. In a separate operation, the Anti-Trafficking Department of Pakistan Customs Enforcement uncovered illicit goods worth more than Rs10 million concealed in a bus coming from Quetta.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2023.