After gold, Mumbai customs now behind pearls

Mumbai: Two brothers were arrested by the Mumbai customs on Wednesday in relation to the first ever case of seizure of pearls.

Custom Officers of Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) arrested Jogendra and Yogen Javeheri, both brothers, who are directors of Ronak Jewelers. They were arrested and released on bail on Wednesday evening. The importer mis-declared the processed pearls as raw pearls in order to evade 10% duty and condition of the license.

In the consignment at precious cargo customs clearance center at Bandra Kurla Complex the importer declared goods as raw pearls, which has no duty charges. However, after examination and lab test the goods were found to be processed pearls and not raw pearls as told by them. These processed pearls attract 10% duty. The value, which was declared as Rs 57 lakh initially, was declared to be Rs 1.3 crore after revaluation by valuer.

"There are around 130 consignments imported in past 5 years and further investigation are in progresses," said a Custom Officer. He further added, "We doubted them with the fact that why did he import raw pearls from Kobe (Japan), which is the World's largest Pearls processing center. Even though they were originating from Indonesia these people were importing them from Japan. We got them independently tested through laboratory and found that there was some processing done on them."