Gujarat High Court quotes Pink Floyd's lyrics, quashes over a decade old show cause notices by customs dept

Heavy legal jargon, a bunch of sections of the criminal law and articles from the Constitution are the most common things you will hear in court judgements. The Gujarat High Court, however, did something out of the ordinary. In a case pertaining to the prolonged inaction of customs department, the bench quoted the lyrics of a rock song by English band Pink Floyd in its judgement.

According to a report by the Times of India, the court was hearing the plea of a company to quash two show cause notices issued to it by the customs department over a decade ago.

A bench comprising Justice Bhargav Karia and Justice D N Ray opened its judgment with a verse from Pink Floyd's song Time from its 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon -- "And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun..."

The lyrics were penned by the band's former member Roger Waters.

Quoting the lyrics, the court rapped the authorities for not resolving the matter for such a long time and the quashed the two show cause notices.

As per the case, the petitioner Rohan Dyes and Intermediates Ltd, had exported dyes and chemicals in 2009 under the duty entitlement pass book (DEPB) scheme.

This was followed by searches by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) at the company premises where they found discrepancies in the declared product details. This led to the DRI issuing a show-cause notice in 2010 proposing confiscation of goods.

Another show-cause notice was issued in 2011 after which, the company in a reply on June 15, 2012, clarified that there had been no mis-declaration of products. Following this, the matter was left in a limbo.

Frustrated by the prolonged delay, the company moved the high court in 2020, seeking to have the notices quashed on the grounds of inaction.

In its judgement, the court quashed the notices and observed, "The impugned SCNs have remained pending for more than 15 years and 13 years respectively. Considering the aforesaid decisions, this Court has no hesitation in holding that due to an inordinately long lapse of time, the impugned show-cause notices dated 08.03.2010 and 03.11.2011 can no longer remain pending for adjudication and must be quashed and set aside on that score alone."