Customs, CTC destroy Rs. 390 Mn worth illicit fags seized from BIA

Colombo, November 08 (Daily Mirror) - A large stock of illicit cigarettes seized by the Sri Lanka Customs from the airport, which was worth over Rs. 390 million was destroyed at the Western Power Waste-to-Energy Power Plant in Kerawalapitiya this week.

The Customs authorities with Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) officials destroyed about 2.6 million sticks of a range of foreign brands of cigarettes smuggled into the country by passengers coming through the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA).

The BIA Customs officials made a series of detections in the past two months when inbound local passengers returning from Middle Eastern countries tried to smuggle in millions of rupees worth of illicit cigarettes.

A container load of the seized cigarettes were dumped into the garbage incineration plant at the Western Power Plant under the supervision of the Sri Lanka Customs and CTC officials.