Smuggling case: Customs officer's bail plea rejected

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, NOV. 12. A Delhi court has rejected a bail application by a Customs officer in a smuggling racket case in which Customs officials and a group of Uzbek women connived to smuggle precious goods, including arms, into the country between 1997-99.

Rejecting the bail application of the Customs officer, Mr. V.K. Khurana, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM), Mr. V.K. Maheshwari, said: ``Being a public servant, the official's culpability in the case is more serious than Olga Korizeva, an Uzbekistani woman smuggler and main accused in the case, as without his connivance Korizeva and her accomplices would not have been able to smuggle contraband into the country.''

The officer had sought bail on the ground that the main accused Korizeva had been granted bail.

Korizeva is in Tihar jail under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act (COFEPOSA) in another matter.

Korizeva had once brought seven bullet-proof jackets. The Customs officials at the Indira Gandhi International Airport cleared them with a fine of Rs. 15,000.

Olga had been coming with smuggled goods since 1997 and had visited India for more than a hundred times (80 times in a year).

The matter came to public knowledge last year when an Additional Sessions Judge of Delhi during the hearing of bail plea of Korizeva expressed doubts over the role of the Customs officials and suggested that the CBI probe their conduct in allowing the woman to smuggle goods into India on so many occasions.

Korizeva had visited India 22 times in three months before she was arrested by the Air Customs with 81,160 yards of Chinese silk valued at Rs. 1,55,82,720 in August last year.

During each visit, she used to go to Lahore on a short trip.

The Customs Department had admitted before the trial court that on several occasions she was set free and her smuggled goods were released after she declared her consignment for adjudication.

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