Gujarat High Court orders arrest of ship laden with rice
09-Oct-2024 08:59 PM
Ahmedabad. Gujarat High Court has ordered the officials of Deen Dayal (Kandla) Port office and Customs Department to detain a merchant ship- SW South Wind 1 which is present at this port and inside the Indian waters. This ship has been asked to be kept in custody till further orders.
Actually, after a petition filed by a company- MEIR Commodities India, a single bench judge of the High Court gave an oral order to this effect.
Actually, this ship was carrying about 460 tonnes of Sela rice stock of MEIR Commodities firm which was detained by the Customs Department.
As a result, the company had to seek refuge in the court. On its petition, the court has ordered to detain the ship till further orders.
Actually, the revenue vigilance officials had a message that white rice was being sent out from this ship by declaring it as organic rice.
There were already complaints of irregularities or fraud in the export of organic rice. Some exporters were shipping general grade white rice in the name of organic rice. Apart from SW South Wind 1, another ship MV Delta has also been detained by the revenue vigilance officers.
MEIR informed the court that it had received an order to sell 450 tonnes of long grain Indian IIR-64 Sela rice to JK Tea Foods Europe MDCP at a price of $ 604 per tonne and an agreement was made with OK International Logistics LCC for booking the ship for its shipment.
A total of 50,670 tonnes of rice was to be loaded on this ship and the company's rice stock was a small part of it. But when the ship was detained at Kandla port, its rice could not be shipped.
The High Court judge has said that the ship has not been stopped because of the cargo of the MERR company and the company is not at fault in this matter, but still it has suffered huge financial loss and the ship itself is solely responsible for it.
While ordering the ship to be stopped at the port as a whole, the court said that the exporting firm has claimed damages of $ 3,67,503 and if the owner of the ship comes forward to pay it, then the arrest order will not be implemented. The next hearing of the case will be on October 21.