Hyderabad luxury car dealer arrested in Rs 100 cr customs fraud case

In a major crackdown on high-end automobile smuggling, authorities have arrested Basharat Khan, the owner of a luxury car showroom in Hyderabad, for allegedly masterminding a massive customs duty evasion racket worth Rs 100 crore.

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The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) confirmed Khan’s arrest from Gujarat, following a detailed investigation into the illegal import of nearly 30 ultra-luxury vehicles. These included top-end models such as the Hummer EV, Cadillac Escalade, Rolls Royce, Lexus, Toyota Land Cruiser, and Lincoln Navigator.

According to DRI sources, Khan and his associates were importing luxury cars from countries like the United States and Japan but falsely declared them as being sourced from Sri Lanka and Dubai, where import duties are significantly lower. To bypass scrutiny, the imported vehicles, originally configured with left-hand drive were modified to right-hand drive before being brought into India using fabricated documents and undervalued invoices.

Investigators revealed that the declared value of each vehicle was fraudulently slashed by nearly 50%, enabling Khan to avoid paying crores in customs duty. This systematic undervaluation and document manipulation reportedly caused a cumulative loss of over Rs 100 crore to the Indian exchequer.

Basharat Khan is believed to have been operating his car lounge in Hyderabad for more than a decade and is specifically accused of importing eight high-end cars that alone resulted in an estimated Rs 7 crore revenue loss.

Authorities are continuing their probe to uncover the full scale of the operation and identify other potential accomplices involved in the smuggling network.