The wording of the arrest memo, signed by Customs Superintendent H B Pandya, says Tae-Min Hun is being arrested `in connection with the investigations' into the smuggling of `ammunition (parts and technology for missiles) in violation of prohibition imposed under the Customs Act'. No specific section is mentioned.

More interesting is the remand warrant, which sent Tae-Min Hun to judicial custody. It is completely silent about the charges. In fact, the space meant for offence in the printed remand warrant has been left blank. It is signed by Chief Judicial Magistrate A D Mugal. The omission appears strange because customs sources said their `production memo' before the CJM mentioned Section 135 of the Customs Act andSection 30 of the Arms Act.

Standing Central Government Council Ratnakar Dholakia, appointed by the Kandla Customs for the case on Thursday, admitted that omission of a specific offence was `a lapse', but said this would not vitiate the arrest or trial. `It may be an irregularity, but it is not an illegality,' he said.Tae-min Hun was arrested on July 16, along with the ship's chief officer Kim-Sol Ik, allegedly because the ship carried equipment for a missile manufacturing factory in Pakistan. Both were remanded to judicial custody the same day.

It was then officially stated that the two had been booked for violation of Customs Act and Arms Act.

Those arrested under the Arms Act are not allowed food from outside and are kept in jail separately from other prisoners. But there are no such restrictions for the North Koreans, jail sources said, adding there was nothing in the remand warrant to justify such restrictions. In fact, they said they had never before seen such a remand warrant.

The master ofthe ship is understood to have sought immediate contact with his country's embassy in New Delhi. He is reportedly bitter over the treatment he and other crew members received at Kandla, but is full of praise for the jail authorities for permitting him good food and boiled or mineral water from the Kandla-based shipping company which handled the ship's sugar cargo.

Sources said that according to the story narrated by Tae-Min Hun, the ship belonged to the North Korean government-owned Bunhung Shipping Company and the machinery cargo was handed over to them at the North Korean port of Nampo by the government-owned Chon Chong Gang Trading Corporation. The cargo was to be delivered to a Malta-based company, named Malta Joint Economic Corporation.

The ship sailed from Nampo on April 4 and halted at Bangkok to load 7,000 tonne of sugar. Another 6,000 tonne of sugar was loaded at the Thai port of Laemchabang on May 18. The sugar was originally to be delivered in Algeria, but when the ship arrived in Singapore onMay 28, they were told to go to Kandla instead. Nobody seems to know why the orders changed.

Clearly, there are more missing pieces to be found before the puzzle is completed.