Prathiba M. Singh, J.

1. The Plaintiff- Shri Anil Chaudhary was appointed as a CFO and Company Secretary of the Defendant company on 16th January, 2007. He continued in the employment of the Defendant company until September, 2010. The Defendant company is a joint venture between Yakult Honsha Company Ltd., Japan and Danone Probiotics, Singapore, which in turn is a subsidiary of Group Danone, France.

2. The brief background of the present suit is that imports of machinery were made by the Defendant in the year 2007-08. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (‘DRI’), Mumbai Zonal Unit, issued a show cause notice dated 25th April, 2012, to the Defendant company alleging evasion of customs duty to the tune of Rs.4,22,58,706/-.

3. The factory and office premises of the Defendant were searched in August, 2011 and during the said search, statements were recorded of Mr. Kiyoshi Oike, Managing Director of the Defendant company. Mr. Oike in his statement to the DRI stated that products such as tanks for culturing, storage and blending, water sterilizer, injection moulding machine, unscrambler selector, filling/sealing machine and refrigeration unit, were described as ‘dairy machiner