The Delhi Bench of Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) has held that customs valuation based on excel data copied in pendrive (secondary evidence) by the customs department without mandatory certificate under section 138C of the Customs Act.
The bench of Justice Dilip Gupta (President) and P.V. Subba Rao (Technical Member) has observed that no reliance can be placed on data contained in the Excel Sheet and the statement made under section 108 of the Customs Act for rejecting the transaction value under rule 12 of the Customs Valuation Rules.
The appellant/assessee imported Automotive Windshield (Automotive Safety Glass) of assorted sizes for various models by classifying them under Customs Tariff Item5 7007 21 90 during the period 2015-18. An investigation was carried out by the Special Intelligence and Investigation Branch and a show cause notice dated 21.08.2020 was issued to the appellant alleging suppression of the actual transaction value and resorting to under-valuation relying upon the Excel Sheet printout taken from a pen drive of the data retrieved from ‘WeChat’ said to have been sent by one person named as Max of M/s. Dongguan Benson Automobile Glass Co. Ltd., China7 to Rajiv Dhuper, partner of the appellant.
The Excel Sheet contains details, such as Invoice Number, CIF value, Container Number and payment details which are alleged to be of the imports made by the appellant from the supplier from 2015-2018. On the basis of a comparison of the said details with the declared value in the Bills of Entry, the show cause notice alleged that the appellant undervalued the imports to evade payment of duty.
Accordingly, it proposed to reject the declared transaction value under rule 12 of the 2007 Valuation Rules and re-determine it under rule 3 read with rule 10 of the 2007 Valuation Rules.
The assessee contended that the Excel Sheet data retrieved from WE-CHAT and copied in a pen drive, being a secondary electronic evidence, is legally not admissible as evidence and cannot be relied upon to prove undervaluation in the absence of the statutory compliance of producing a mandatory certificate under section 138C of the Customs Act, which is pari material to section 65B of Evidence Act, 1872.
The department contended that the documents received on ‘WeChat’ revealed that the importer had indulged in suppressing actual invoices depicting the correct transaction value of the goods in order to evade proper duties, and presented fabricated invoices for customs clearances, having lower values for evasion of customs duty.
The issue raised whether the printout of the Excel Sheet is admissible evidence in the absence of statutory compliance of producing a certificate under section 138C of the Customs Act.
The tribunal held that the printout was taken from a secondary evidence namely the pen drive. It could not have been considered as evidence in the absence of a certificate under section 138C of the Customs Act.
Case Details
Case Title: M/s. Composite Impex Versus The Principal Commissioner of Customs (Import)
Case No.: Customs Appeal No. 50955 of 2021
Date: 15.05.2025
Counsel For Appellant: Alok Agarwal
Counsel For Respondent: Nagendra Yadav
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