Customs revises arrest, seizure reporting with focus on digital tracking

New Delhi: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has overhauled the process of arrests and seizure reporting in customs cases, making it mandatory for officials to include Digit ID as well as date, time, place of arrest and personal information of the arrested individuals in incident reports.

Digit ID is a unique identifier used for digitally tracking enforcement cases within the CBIC's internal systems.

The revised format, which was sent in an internal mail to customs field formations, said officials must give description of the offence and seizure details even in cases where no arrests are made but evasion is detected.


ET has seen a copy of the mail.

The revised format will apply to cases involving smuggling, commercial fraud and misuse of export promotion schemes.

The move aims to bring transparency in the customs seizure process and to minimise any possibility of misuse of privilege by customs officials.

While reporting was done in case of arrests, it was not done for non seizure, and most of the time there was no direct reporting to the centralised database, leaving scope for manipulation of facts. Also, there was no timeframe for reporting.

The new format mandates officials to immediately file incident reports and submit them via email to senior CBIC officials including the member (compliance) and heads of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Directorate General of Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM), besides their top officials. The CBIC communication said reporting must be done in a timely manner to ensure effective enforcement.

Officials said inclusion of Digit ID will help in central monitoring of customs cases.

"Apart from ensuring transparency in customs seizure, the revised reporting format will help in digitising case tracking with mandatory Digit ID and help in administrative oversight," a senior official told ET.

Experts said this will enhance the integrity of enforcement actions, empower data analytics for trend detection and facilitate better risk profiling "By assigning a unique identifier to each case, authorities can now track enforcement actions in real time and ensure centralised, data-driven monitoring," said Amit Maheshwari, tax partner at AKM Global, a tax and consulting firm.

He added that the details of offence, modus operandi and duty implications will not only promote uniformity but also reduce the chances of selective disclosure or manipulation of facts.

"Furthermore, the mandate to report these cases directly to key institutions such as the DRI, DGGRAM and CBIC ensures a multi-layered oversight mechanism," he said.