Pune: Police seize illegally imported cigarettes from grocery store operator

Pune: Police seize illegally imported cigarettes from grocery store operator

Pune: Police have seized illegally imported cigarettes worth Rs 7.65 lakh from a grocery store operator in Wadgaon Sheri on Wednesday (August 6). Police said the imported cigarette boxes do not have warning signs or messages which are illegal.

The suspect has been identified as Banaram Gomaji Chaudhari (35), a resident of Wadgaon Sheri. The Anti-Narcotics Cell of Pune Police Crime Branch has lodged FIR against him at the Chandan Nagar police station. Banaram has been booked under section 7(2) and 20(2) of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003.

This act says that ‘No person shall carry on trade or commerce in cigarettes or any other tobacco products unless every package of cigarettes or any other tobacco products sold, supplied or distributed by him bears thereon, or on its label, the specified warning’ and it is a punishable offence to do so.

The act further says that ‘any person who sells or distributes cigarettes or tobacco products which do not contain either on the package or on their label, the specified warning and the nicotine and tar contents shall in the case of first conviction be punishable with imprisonment for a term, which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both, and, for the second or subsequent conviction, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and with fine which may extend to three thousand rupees.’

According to police, Chaudhari operates a grocery store at Sainikwadi in Wadgaon Sheri area. He had a stock of imported cigarettes in his possession and was selling it to his customers. These cigarettes produced by foreign companies did not bear the warning signs or messages on its boxes as mandated by Indian laws.

Police Inspector Rajendra Mohite and his team of police constable Pandurang Wanjale, Pramod Tilekar, Sayyad Sahil Shaikh, Pradeep Gade and Mohan Yelpale raided Chaudhari’s shop and seized the cigarette stock worth Rs 765,960. Investigations are on to find out from where Chaudhari had procured these cigarettes.

Earlier, in April month during the nationwide lockdown, Sunil Bhujbal (31), a resident of Sainath Nagar in Chandan Nagar was arrested by Chandan Nagar police on charges of selling cigarettes and tobacco products illegally. The Anti-Narcotics Cell had in the same month seized 37 boxes of cigarettes worth Rs 39 lakhs from a shop owner in Marketyard who was found violating lockdown norms and profiteering from selling cigarettes during lockdown.

Local Crime Branch (LCB) of Pune rural police had also seized cigarettes worth Rs 4.5 crores in June month from possession of an inter-state gang involved in highway robberies.

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