Rajapakse vs Director General of Customs and Another – sllr 2006 volume 3 page 052

The case between Rajapakse (Plaintiff) and the Director General of Customs and Another (Defendants) addressed whether the petitioner’s vehicle should be forfeited under section 119 of the Customs Ordinance, despite the petitioner’s claim of lacking knowledge regarding the falsified documents. It was determined that “willfully use,” in the context of submitting tampered documentation, encompasses purposeful or deliberate acts without the necessity of prior knowledge of fraud. The holding reaffirmed that liability under section 119 is satisfied by the act of submitting falsified documents, regardless of the petitioner’s awareness of the fraud. This decision relied on interpretations from cases such as Chellappah v Commissioner of Income Tax, In Re Young and Harston, and R v Badger, emphasizi