I'm seated in the waiting area awaiting the in-charge to pass necessary instructions to his sub-ordinate to process the papers for clearing the goods.
There is a saying, "Man proposes and God disposes" In our case, this can be rephrased as 'Importer proposes and Customs official disposes'
Don't hold your breath, all is well that ends well and it ended well. Well, in the end, it ended well.
As it transpired, the last paragraph of the customs saga was yet to be written.
First, the preamble.
The entire CCTL is manned by a very few customs officials who man key posts. I could only see three of them.
1. Appraisal Officer (AO) - Senior most (At least in this place. I referred to him in my previous post as "In-charge" I'm not sure of this anymore)
2. Inspection Officer (IO) - The man in the lime light in our case, protagonist (or villain) depending on one's perspective or which side of fence are you in.
3. Prevention Officer (PO) - Sits in the adjacent cabin. Don't know his his role but going by the number of people crowding him, appears to be a much less prominent. (In fact there was no crowd around him. Seen loitering around)
There may be more but since I could see no more cabins, I assume that all others may be junior level officials.
Main story:
After whiling away my time browsing the net for about half an hour, it appears that the main character appears. Our shipping agent's rep appearing to be demoralised, comes to say that the inspection officer has summoned me. Sensing something amiss, I go in.
In my first letter to the Customs Commissioner, to strengthen our case (as presumed by me) I had stated that most of the drivers are sourced from India.
He asks "Is it so? Can you prove it?"
I reply in affirmative.
Oh, he says, in that case, are they labelled accordingly?
I'm a little perplexed and say, I don't know. I remembered that in the second pallet, I saw one box labelled with the name of our FM Jls001
and that he ordered X-LS kits, the drivers of which are sourced from Peerless. He appeared sure that they won't be labelled as "Made India" FWIW, we then go and check the package. To my utter dismay, I found no markings whatsoever. I go back and mutter sheepishly that no such label was found.
"Without the label, how can you claim that these are of Indian origin?" he fumes. I have no option than saying "though I can eventually prove that the drivers mentioned are of Indian origin, I agree that I can't prove it right away"
There you go he says, sensing blood. He adds, "the whole transaction is "humbuk" and referred to some other import where 'CBI' was investigating. I was a little flustered and said, what is our import got to do with CBI, there is no fraud involved, no under invoicing, no prohibited goods but just mere speaker parts. He says he can't waste his time explaining it and gestures to our Clearing agent to explain to me.
He processes some papers and then goes out for "Inspecting" those consignments, leaving us stranded for 20 minutes.
He comes back and processes some more papers. After sometime, he looks up and says, "Ok I agree with you about the origin, the cost and the genuineness of our case." and explains in the same breath that in the other case, some one imported something on behalf of some four other guys and the whole thing was a big fraud.
I had to reiterate that all the parties involved are law abiding citizens and that the whole thing has prior approval of the Additional Commissioner of Customs who has permitted this. "Who is he to permit, is he a guru? I can get even him fixed" he retorted.
I've realised that I have to play up to his antics than a confrontational note and put up a face of reconciliation; as per the advise of the shipping agent, I have stated that irrespective of the origins of the goods, I'm paying all duties and levies.
His antics continue; "OK you are in a Bank; I come and take a 'Education Loan' and use the funds for lending; will you permit?" I can't figure out what the correlation is but play up by saying, Oh yeah you have a point and say, "OK now what do we do"
He then probably realises that I was standing all the while. Orders a chair for me to sit and his monologue continues: "Sir, you were a Class one Gazetted officer of Army and here you are, standing in front of me with crossed hands. Why do you do all this"
I did not understand what his whole point of trying to belittle me, whether it is because of the fact that the AO had offered me a chair the moment I came in and shooed away others or anything else but keeping in mind the repercussions, I said, "Ok sir, this will definitely not happen again; please help us somehow"
Upon me stating that, he signals the rep of our clearing agents to present our papers and signs them. But the time is 1930 and the process of clearing the consignment can only happen on the next working day i.e. 16th August. That has ended (hopefully) the customs saga.
In the hindsight, I have no hesitation in believing that I couldn't pull this whole thing off but for the prefix that is affixed to my name. I'm not going to make another effort, come what may;
PERIOD.
Edit: I've added text which is in
dark slate grey
