Delhi court acquits ex-Customs Commissioner in graft case

A Delhi court has acquitted former customs commissioner Atul Dixit and two others, including his deputy, in a suspected graft case of Rs 74.6 crore arising out of alleged dubious remittances of Rs 8,000 crore.

Besides Dixit, who was working as an Inland Container Depot (ICD) Customs Commissioner, the court acquitted the then deputy commissioner Nalin Kumar and businessman Sahdev Gupta who were arrested in August 2015. All the three accused were currently out on bail.

The case was related to alleged fraudulent exports worth Rs 8,000 crore, using inflated price tags, by Gupta in 2013-14 to companies based in Hong Kong and Dubai.

In the order, Additional Sessions Judge Virender Kumar Goyal said that the prosecution failed to establish the case against the accused beyond reasonable doubts.

In its charge sheet, the CBI had alleged that garments purportedly exported were over invoiced to claim inflated duty draw back.

While probing the case, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) allegedly found that companies to whom the exports were claimed to have been made denied giving any such orders whereas Rs 8,000 crore were received by Gupta in his accounts, the CBI said.

Based on its investigation, the DRI had asked Dixit, a 1988-batch officer, and Kumar to block duty drawback claim of Rs 300 crore presumably made by Gupta, it said.

"It is further alleged that in order to favour the private person, the said public servants deliberately did not suspend the duty drawback of the firms immediately and ensured that the amounts claimed by the firms as duty drawback are transferred to their bank accounts," the CBI said.

The central probe agency claimed that there was a wrongful revenue loss of around Rs 74.61 crore to the government and corresponding gain to the private parties.

During the searches, the agency had allegedly recovered Rs 85 lakh cash from the lockers of Kumar and property documents worth crores from Dixit's lockers.