1997 (11) TMI 316

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..... r of the ld. Lower Appellate Authority, have released the goods after taking a personal bond for the difference in the redemption fine between the one fixed by the ld. Original Authority and the ld. Lower Appellate Authority and the Bank Guarantee for 75% of CIF Value. 2. We had come across similar cases thereafter the appellate order had been passed and the appeal had been filed before us wherein we had pointed out when the department had filed or contemplated filing of the appeal in that event only two courses are open before the authority i.e. either to release the goods in terms of the appellate authority s order or to seek necessary direction in this regard from the Tribunal if they wanted to release the goods on some terms. 3. In .....

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..... by the authorities by the importer. In the present case, there was no miscellaneous application pending from the importer seeking release of the goods subject to the terms that may be fixed by the Tribunal and the only application that was before the Tribunal was the stay petition filed by the learned Commissioner. The Commissioner on his own therefore could not have interfered with the order impugned before us. Any order passed in this regard would be in the nature of extra judicial order and in our view it is not a proper thing to do. In case the Department wanted to release the goods, suitable directions could have been obtained from the Tribunal for setting the term for release of the goods either pending disposal of the stay petition o .....

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..... mation he has got is that the then Commissioner ordered the release of the goods at the request of the party. We only like to observe that this response is not satisfactory. What we are interested to know is when the department is in appeal and they seek the enhancement of the redemption fine, the only effective basis to go by is to get the actual market enquiry done in respect of the goods which have been imported. In fact it would be expected that when the matter is before the authorities below, they would conduct market enquiries before fixing the redemption fine. There is no explanation as to why this was not done. In any case, necessary precautions should have been taken to draw the samples for ascertaining the position in this regard. .....

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