Mundra port: Adani Group reveals details on seizure of hazardous cargo containers; lauds agencies' diligence
Adani group on Friday released an official media statement informing that a joint team from Customs and the DRI seized eight containers from a foreign vessel at Mundra Port containing hazardous goods.
FollowAdani Group on Friday released a statement saying that a joint Customs and DRI team seized several containers at Mundra Port from a foreign vessel on concerns that they contained undeclared hazardous cargo on Thursday, November 18. The said port is run by Adani Ports and SEZ (APSEZ), the ports business under the Gautam Adani-run conglomerate. Lauding the Customs and DRI employees for their alertness and vigilance, APSEZ has said that it has extended all the possible assistance to the operation and further thanked the personnel for their coordinated action.
Providing further information on the operations, the statement said that the team seized a total of 8 containers from a foreign vessel under the suspect of containing potentially radioactive substances. “While the cargo was listed as Non-Hazardous, the seized containers had Hazard Class 7 markings and were en route from Karachi in Pakistan to Shanghai in China,” it added.
Although the containers were not destined for Mundra Port or any other port in India but were en route from Karachi in Pakistan to Shanghai in China, the government authorities had them offloaded at Mundra Port for further inspection, it said.
Earlier this week, Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd (APSEZ) had announced that it will not handle containerised cargo originating from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan at all its terminals from November 15. The decision came nearly a month after the seizure of 2,988 kg of heroin at Mundra Port located in Kutch district of Gujarat.
In September, in the single largest heroin haul in India authorities had seized around 3,000 kg of the drug, believed to be from Afghanistan and likely worth Rs 21,000 crore in the global market, from two containers at the Mundra port in Gujarat's Kutch district, officials had said. Ever since the heroine haul took place, APSEZ had stopped handling export-import containerised cargo from countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from November 15 and the department had kept an eagle eye on the port.
