DRI Seizes Rs 8.64 Crore Smuggled Cigarettes in Mizoram

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has seized 43.2 lakh sticks of foreign-origin cigarettes valued at Rs 8.64 crore in Mizoram. The load was stopped while it was being moved towards Aizawl, and the agency suspects it had been brought in from Myanmar. The driver of the truck was arrested.

The interception

Officers of the DRI Aizawl Regional Unit had specific information that a truck was carrying a large quantity of foreign-origin cigarettes towards the state capital. They kept watch along the Champhai-Aizawl Road and stopped the vehicle at Tuirial village. A thorough examination yielded 432 cases holding 43,20,000 sticks of the Patron brand.

Why the packets were illegal

Examination showed that the cigarette packets carried none of the pictorial and health warnings that the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 makes compulsory. Those warnings are the mark of a legally sold packet in India, and their absence on a whole consignment points to goods that never passed through customs.

The law applied

The cigarettes and the truck were seized under Section 110 of the Customs Act, 1962, the provision that empowers a customs officer to seize goods believed to be liable to confiscation. The arrest of the driver followed.

The route

A first look at the case suggests the cigarettes had come into Mizoram from Myanmar through the Zokhawthar sector of the Mizoram-Myanmar border, a stretch repeatedly used for moving foreign tobacco products across. The agency reads the seizure as part of a wider effort to take apart cross-border smuggling rings, stop the illegal movement of foreign-origin goods and tighten enforcement along exposed international border routes in the North-East.