Efficiency is a virtue — until it becomes injustice. In the customs reference against Khalid Ahmad and others (696 of 2019, with 702 of 2019), the Sindh High Court (Justice Agha Faisal, author; Justice Shah Nawaz Memon) set aside the Customs Appellate Tribunal's common judgment and remanded the matter for fresh adjudication.
The problem was stark. The Tribunal had decided three factually distinct appeals through a single, perfunctory common judgment — and in doing so had ordered the release of vehicles despite a Forensic Science Laboratory report showing tampered chassis numbers. A tampered chassis number is the classic red flag of a smuggled or stolen vehicle; brushing it aside in a one-paragraph-fits-all disposal was, in the bench's view, not befitting the last fact-finding forum.
The High Court held the applicant's plea well-reasoned: each appeal demanded independent discussion of its own facts and law. A common judgment is permissible only where the cases are truly common; where the facts diverge — as they plainly did here — clubbing them together is a failure of adjudication, not an economy of it.
The remand sends all three appeals back to the Tribunal for proper, separate consideration. For customs practitioners, the precedent cuts both ways and usefully so: if a common judgment against your client glosses over the distinct facts of your case, cite this judgment to have it set aside; and if you are defending a common judgment, make sure it actually engages each appeal's facts. Tez raftaar achhi hai, magar insaaf ki keemat par nahi — speed can never substitute for reasoning.