As The Sunday Express reported this week, any “offensive” map of India, depicting the Indo-Pak border in particular, when carried in a foreign publication is defaced with a blue stamp of denial by a 40-member cell in the Customs Department. But those who get away with a stamped map are the more fortunate ones. There are others who have to see all their printed material burnt.

Even if it’s part of a brochure showing a firm’s global network.

That’s what’s happened to a web-based global news and financial platform that feeds news agencies across the world. The agency’s New Delhi office was to receive some 300 brochures from its headquarters in USA detailing its operations and reach. Instead, it received a show-cause notice from Customs for importing “in contravention of the Import & Export (Control) Act, 1947,” imposition of a penalty of Rs 5,000 for the offence and, worse, information that the entire consignment would be burnt.

Last week, when the Customs Department at the cargo section of Delhi airport opened the consignment — it had been lying for a month and a half in its warehouse — and pulled out one of the 75-page brochures, it found spread across Pages 2 and 3 a world map showing the firm’s international network. The map showed India’s international boundary with Pakistan as the world sees it (without Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) and so was deemed “neither authentic nor correct.”

A show-cause was sent on February 22.

“They sent us a show cause notice and said they will have to burn the entire consignment. We suggested they either stamp the map as incorrect or even tear out the two pages across which the map is spread out but they refused to do so. Customs officials say we will have to forego this consignment. The fact that we will not even be commercially distributing these and only planned to use it internally and share rate lists with some of our corporate clients has not helped. If they do destroy the consignment it is a major loss of time for us and re-printing takes quite long”, said the agency’s senior executive.

... contd.