In a courtroom that had clearly run out of patience, the Delhi High Court delivered a sharp rap on the knuckles of the Customs Department—along with a ₹50,000 bill—for attempting to reopen a judgment the judges said never needed revisiting in the first place.
The dispute? A long-running tussle over sex-toy consignments, labelled by some as “body massagers,” that Customs had been reluctant to release despite earlier clearances and a prior court order demanding a uniform national policy on such imports.
A Division Bench noted that the review plea was not only meritless but part of an unnecessary campaign of pressure on two companies whose shipments had repeatedly passed muster before.
The Court didn’t mince its words. It declared that the petitioners were being dragged into needless litigation, even though similar goods from other importers sailed through without fuss. With that, the review attempt was thrown out—each petition carrying a ₹25,000 cost, recoverable directly from the salary of the officer responsible.
This all followed the Court’s earlier direction that the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs convene an inter-ministerial consultation to finally create consistent rules for products commonly marketed as sex toys or personal massagers. The same judgment had also ordered provisional release of consignments belonging to Techsync and Debanjan Impex.
In its review request, the Department tried to lean on fresh objections: missing approvals from the Drug Controller General of India, and the absence of an extended producer responsibility certificate under the Battery Waste Management Rules. But the Bench found that key guidelines that undercut these arguments had never been revealed by Customs at all.
With that omission standing out like a neon sign, the review collapsed instantly—and the original directions remain firmly in force.
