ORDER
Smt. Archana Wadhwa
1. The appellant has prayed for disposal of their Stay Petition and Appeal on merits as he is financially not in a position to attend the hearing. Accordingly, I have heard Shri V.K. Chaturvedi, ld. SDR for the Revenue and have gone through the impugned order passed by the Commissioner of Customs (Appeals).
2. From the impugned order, it is seen that the appellant has filed the appeals and stay petition before the Commissioner (Appeals) for dispensing with the condition of predeposit of personal penalty of Rs.20,000/-. The said application was listed for disposal on 26.9.2000 and thereafter on 21.11.2000. The appellant did not appear on both the dates. As such, the Commissioner (Appeals) took up the stay application for decision. He observed that the appellant has not produced any proof for deposit of penalty or nay proof in respect of his financial position, he dismissed the stay petition and along with the same, he dismissed the appeal for non-compliance with Section 129E of the Customs Act, 1962.The impugned order passed by the Commissioner (Appeals) is not justified inasmuch as even if the Commissioner considered that the stay petition filed by the appellant is required to be rejected, he should have given some time to the appellant to deposit the amount in question, Dismissal of the appeal on the same date when the stay petition was rejected is not in consonance/ with Judicial principle. However, I also note that while deciding the Stay petition, the Commissioner has not taken into account the prima-facie merits of the case. However, as I feel that no useful purposes is going to be served by remanding the matter of the Commission (Appeals) for decision on merits, I take up the appeal itself for disposal after dispensing with the condition of predeposit of penalty.
3.The appellant is a transporter from whose premises 200 kgs. of Cinamon and cloves of alleged foreign origin were recovered and seized and ultimately confiscated by the original adjudication’s order. The appellant in the capacity of transport company owner gave a statement that the consignment was received by him from one person on different dates and was booked by them along with forwarding note. The forwarding note was duly submitted by the respective consignor and as a common carrier, Their duty was only to transport the goods from one place to another. The goods were entrusted to them in a packed condition and there was no opportunity/obligation to verify the contents therein. The goods are booked by them at the declaration given in the forwarding note/consignment note on “said to contain” basis and they could not have been made responsible for the alleged smuggled nature of the goods.
4. I find that the Tribunal in the case of Rajdoot Road Carrier : 2000 (118) ELT 146 (T) has observed that a carrier of goods is not required to check and verify the contents of the packages and to ensure that the goods are not of smuggled nature. I do not find any evidence in the present case to reflect upon on knowledge of the appellant as regards the smuggled character of the goods in question. As such, I hold that the imposition of penalty upon him was not justified. Accordingly, the same is set aside and the appeal is allowed with consequential relief to the appellant. Stay Petition also gets disposed of.
Dictated and pronounced in the open Court.