A passenger carrying smuggled smartphones worth Rs. 1.9 million was caught yesterday at the Quaid-e-Azam International airport in Karachi.
The passenger has been identified as Mujahid, who arrived from Sharjah and was later caught by custom officials at a checkpoint as he was carrying dozens of undeclared smartphones.
According to details he was carrying smartphones worth Rs. 1.9 million, that included devices of Samsung, Apple and LG. The accused has been taken into custody and his physical remand has been obtained from the court.
Illegal Imports are hurting the National Exchequer:
It merits mentioning here that smartphone smuggling isn’t a new thing in Pakistan. According to a rough estimate more than 70% smartphone sold in the market are brought through smuggling. Due to these illegal activities national exchequer has to bear the loss of billions of Rupees each year.
Usually the smuggling is done mainly through Afghanistan, however sometimes people try to carry smuggled items via Dubai and European countries as well.
In July 2016, Customs officials recovered more than 1600 mobile phones of various brands from four passengers returning from Dubai. The total worth of the recovered items was around Rs. 20 million.
