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Showing contexts for: illegal export in Commissioner Of Customs (Airport And ... vs M/S Jaiswal Import Cargo Services Ltd on 28 August, 2025Matching Fragments
10. Beginning with the facts, there is virtually no dispute. There is a concurrent finding of fact by the Commissioner and the CESTAT that the appellant did not have knowledge that the illegal exports were effected using the G cards given to VK's employees. There was no active or passive facilitation by the appellant in that sense. Undoubtedly, the provision of the G cards to nonemployees itself violated the CHA Regulations. This is an admitted fact, but it is not the Revenue's argument (nor is it the reasoning adopted by the Commissioner or the CESTAT) that this violation in itself is sufficiently grave so as to justify the extreme measure of revocation. Not any and every infraction of the CHA Regulations, either under Regulation 13 ("Obligations of CHA") or elsewhere, leads to the revocation of license; rather, in line with a proportionality analysis, only grave and serious violations justify revocation. In other cases, suspension for an adequate period of time (resulting in loss of business and income) suffices, both as a punishment for the infraction and as a deterrent to future violations. For the punishment to be proportional to the violation, revocation of the license under Rule 20(1) can only be justified in the presence of aggravating factors that allow the infraction to be labeled grave. It would be inadvisable, even if possible, to provide an exhaustive list of such aggravating factors, but a review of case law throws some light on this aspect. In cases where revocation of license has been upheld (i.e. the cases relied upon by the Revenue), there has been an element of active facilitation of the infraction, i.e. a finding of mens rea, or a gross and flagrant violation of the CHA Regulations. In Sri Kamakshi Agency (supra), the licensee stopped working the license, but rather, for remuneration, permitted his Power of Attorney to work the license, thus in effect transferring the license for money.