Dawood aide, 2 others declare diesel as oil to evade high duty

Dharmendra Sajnani

Three persons, including a Dawood associate and a former Customs officer, have been arrested for importing high-speed diesel by declaring it as hydrocarbon oil as the latter attracts a lower duty, causing huge losses to the exchequer. High-speed diesel is the diesel that we get at fuel pumps across the country.


With the three arrests on Saturday, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) claimed to have busted a gang that had been indulging in misdeclaring goods to evade a higher Customs duty.

The trio was arrested with 9,000 metric tonnes of diesel worth Rs 37 crore. The DRI is probing some companies which were indulging in the crime. A source said that the DRI has detained at least 10 containers on the suspicion that their owners did not declared the real goods.

Officials said that the arrested former Customs officer, Indu Shekar, allegedly aided and abetted the crime. The Dawood associate who was arrested, Dharmendra Sajnani, has a criminal record. In 2017, he was arrested by the Ahmedabad anti-terrorism squad (ATS) for the 2000 murder of Rajkot Mills’ manager, Arvind Patel, over a financial dispute. Sajnani shuttles between Dubai and Mumbai and used runs a yarn and velvet business.

The DRI said that Shekar, who took voluntary retirement a couple of few years ago, had been helping the third arrested accused, Anjali Dubey of Flexi India, in importing diesel by declaring it as hydrocarbon. Sajnani, Shekar and Dubey were produced before a court and remanded into DRI custody.

DRI officials claimed that they had received a tip-off about some importers smuggling high-speed diesel into India through Nhava Sheva port by under-evaluating it. “We had information that Shekar and Sajnani were likely to arrive from Dubai on Saturday. We laid a trap at the airport and arrested them,” said an DRI official.

DRI officials said that diesel and petrol can only be imported by authorised public sector companies. Advocate Sujay Kantawala for Sajnani said, “My client is innocent and they are doing legal business. The Custom department’s own lab deputy chief chemist has certified that the seized liquid is furnace oil and not diesel,” said Kantawala.