Case: F. N. Roy Vs. Collector Of Customs, Calcutta

1. By a notification dated March 16, 1953, the Government of India, gave general permission to all persons to import into India from certain countries any goods of any of the description specified in the schedule annexed to the notification. Among the goods specified in the Schedule were theand steel chains of all sorts assessable under Item 63 (28), Indian Customs Tariff, excluding chains for automobiles and cycles whether cut to length or in rolls.The petitioner is an importer of goods. He states that relying on the notification mentioned above he placed an order with a company in Japan sometime in August, 1953, for the supply of certain goods called in the trade, Zip Chains. The goods arrived in the port of Calcutta in due course and the petitioners bank paid the price of the goods amounting to Rs.the goods could be cleared from the port of Calcutta, the petitioner received a communication from the Assistant Collector of Customs for Appraisement, Calcutta, dated November 19, 1953, in which it was stated that it had been found that the petitioner did not possess valid import licence for the goods and requiring him to show cause why the goods should not be confiscated and action taken against the petitioner under S.167 Item 8 of the Sea Customscommunication also enquired if the petitioner wanted to be heard in person. The petitioner submitted in answer a written explanation stating that the Zip Chains imported by him were chains of the Kind free import of which had been permitted by the notification of March 16,1953, and therefore no licence to import them was necessary. He was thereafter again asked by the Customs-authorities whether he wanted a personal hearing to which he replied that he didon December 25, 1953, the Collector of Customs made an order confiscating the goods and imposing a penalty of Rs. 1000/- on the petitioner. This order bore an endorsement that it had been despatched to the petitioner on February 1,It reached him on February 3,The order stated that an appeal would lie against it to the Central Board of Revenue, New Delhi within three months from the date of its despatch as noted onpetitioner preferred an appeal and posted the memorandum of appeal on May 4,The memorandum reached the Central Board of Revenue on May 6, 1954 and was dismissed on the ground that it had been preferred after the expiry of the time limited for the purpose. The Petitioner then made an application to the Government of India for revision of the order of the Central Board of Revenue but this application waspetitioner thereafter applied to the High Court of Punjab under Art.226 of the Constitution for an appropriate writ to quash the order confiscating his goods and imposing the fine on him but this application too was dismissed.

Court's reasoning:
6. This argument is based on the contention that a portion of S.3 (2) of the Act of 1947 offends Art.14 and has therefore to be deleted. This contention is wrong. By its own force no part of S.3 (2) purports to give any discretion to the customs-authorities at all. There is nothing in it therefore to offend Art.The only effect of S.3 (2) is to apply the Sea Customs Act to certainis impossible to say that a statute which only makes another statute applicable to certain cases, offends Art.Such a statute has obviously nothing to do with Art.It is true that S.3 (2) of the Act of 1947 makes S.183 of the Sea Customs Act applicable with a modification. It was said that S.183 so modified offends Art.14.Assume that S.183 as modified infringes Art.What then?Clearly on this assumption S.183 as modified becomes ultra vires and illegal and it goes out of the statutethat does not affect the question before us at all. It does not make the order of confiscation without an option to pay a fine in lieu thereof bad.It has to be remembered that S.3 (2) of the Act of 1947 states that all goods to which any order under sub-s. (1) applies shall be deemed to be goods of which the import has been prohibited under S.19 of the Sea Customs Act. Admittedly sub-s. (1) of S.3 of the Act of 1947 applies to the goods with which this case isS.3 (2) of the Act of 1947 the import of these goods is to be deemed to have been prohibited under S.19 of the Sea Customs Act. It follows that action under S.167, item (8) of the Sea Customs Act can be taken in respect of these goods and they can be confiscated and the person concerned in the illegal import made liable to a penalty. Resort to S.183 of the Sea Customs Act is not necessary to justify the order of confiscation made in this case at all. Indeed S.183 does not authoriseassumes a confiscation authorised by other provisions of the Sea Customs Act and provides that on a confiscation being adjudged, an option to pay a fine in lieu of it shall be given. It cannot therefore be said, even on the assumption that learned counsel was right in his contention that S.183 as modified offends Art.14 that the order of confiscation is bad. As to whether the contention of learned counsel is right or not we decide nothing as it is not necessary to doreasons for this view we have stated earlier. The other is S.183 of the Sea Customs Act as modified by the Act ofAs so modified we have for the present purpose assumed that it offends Art.If it does it goes out as a whole. It is not really a statutory provision in two parts with regard to which it might have been possible to say that one part offends Art.14 while the other part doesthe facts of this case, it is an academic argument. Even if it was right the entire S.183 would have to be ignored but that would not have the effect of making the order of confiscation passed in this case invalid. All that the petitioner is concerned with is to show that the order of confiscation waspresent argument does not touch that point and therefore it is not necessary to consider it at all. Another similar argument was that S.167, item (8) of the Sea Customs Act itself offended Art.14 in that it left to the uncontrolled discretion of the Customs-authorities to decide the amount of the penalty to be imposed. The section makes it clear that the maximum penalty that might be imposed under it is Rs.1, 000. The discretion that the section gives must be exercised within the limit sois not an uncontrolled or unreasonable discretion. Furthermore, the discretion is vested in high Customs officers and there are appeals from their order. The imposition of the fine is really a quasi-judicial act and the test of the quantum of it is in the gravity of the offence.The object of the Act is to prevent unauthorised importation of goods and the discretion has to be exercised with that object inhad been given an opportunity and had not availed himself of it. It was also stated that in deciding not to give the petitioner an option to pay a fine in lieu of confiscation the Customs-authority had gone into certain other transactions without giving any notice to the petitioner that this would be done. It was said that the petitioner was not given an opportunity of being heard in respect of thesenotice which the Customs-authorities gave to the petitioner to show cause why the goods should not be confiscated also informed him necessarily that an order for confiscation might be made without an option to pay a fine in lieu of confiscation being given and therefore it was his fault if he did not appear at the hearing and showed cause why the order of confiscation should not be absolute but should give him an option to pay apoint of view was sought to be supported by citing the cases of two other persons who had imported similar goods at or about the same time; and who had been given the option. The facts of these other cases were however substantiallywas nothing to show in these that goods had been imported in deliberate violation of the order of the Government while in the case of the petitioner there are materials on which such a view could be formed. It appears that the petitioner as the Manager of a firm called Federal Clearing Agency had received a communication from the Customs-authorities on 30-7-1953, that Zip Chains were not covered by the notification of 16th March 1953, and within a fortnight of that communication he had placed the orders for identical goods which he now claims to be within thewas not unreasonable for the Customs-authorities to think that the petitioner had deliberately imported the goods in breach of the order of the Government and without specific licence for that purpose, and on that ground to think it proper not to give him the option. This would be so even if it was assumed that in the dispute with the Public Relations Officer the petitioner was in theis no rule of natural justice that at every stage a person is entitled to a personal hearing. Furthermore, the appeal was out ofthe petitioner had time from 3rd February 1954, till 1st May 1954, to file his appeal but he did not take advantage of this long period. He waited till the end for filing the appeal. There is nothing to show that the arrest was wrongful or that at the date of the arrest the Customs-authorities had any knowledge that the petitioner had not filed his appeal. The contentions that the order complained of was mala fide or that the appeal had not been filed out of time are entirely untenable.