CHANDIGARH, Sept 27: Evasion of excise duty to the tune of Rs 2.67 crore by two drug manufacturing units and a steel wire firm, all located in Punjab, has been detected.Central Excise Commissioner Inder Raj Soni said here today that the drug manufacturing units, located in Nawanshahr district, had adopted a novel modus operandi to evade excise duty by bringing back defective goods, rejected by buyers, and clearing these goods again after carrying out certain physical and chemical process to make the goods marketable, but without payment of duty.The processes amounted to manufacture of goods and required excise duty to be paid when being cleared from the factory.Acting on information, anti-evasion officials visited the manufacturing units at Rail Majra and Toansa and seized several incriminating documents. Scrutiny of the records revealed evasion of duty to the tune of Rs 1.67 crore.The two drug manufacturing units had also installed chilling plants in their factories without payment of excise duty worth Rs 35 lakh.In another case, audit officers visited a leading steel wire firm at Hoshiarpur and during scrutiny of records found that it had been misclassifying goods and clearing the same at lower rate of duty. Using this modus operandi, the firm has cleared goods valued at Rs 26.18 crore since April 1994, thereby evading duty of Rs 1 crore.Cases for evasion of excise duty have been registered against these units under the Central Excise Act and further investigations are on.
