NEW DELHI: Indian safety companies stopped a Pakistan-bound ship from China at Mumbai’s Nhava Sheva port over suspicions that it contained ‘dual-use consignment’ that could possibly be utilized by Islamabad in its nuclear and ballistics missile programme.
Based on an intelligence enter, the customs officers halted a Malta-flagged service provider ship, CMA CGM Attila, en path to Karachi on January 23 on the port and inspected the consignment which included a Computer Numerical management machine by an Italian firm.
The consignment was additionally inspected by a staff of DRDO which licensed that the CNC machine could possibly be utilized in manufacturing essential elements for Pakistan‘s missile improvement programme.
The officers mentioned there have been issues that Pakistan is perhaps utilising China as a conduit to amass restricted objects from Europe and the US, masking identities to evade detection.
According to paperwork reminiscent of payments of loading and different particulars of the consignment, the consigner was talked about as “Shanghai JXE Global Logistics Co Ltd” and consignee was “Pakistan Wings Pvt Ltd” of Sialkot.

However, a deeper investigation by the safety companies indicated that the consignment, weighing 22,180 kilogrammes, was shipped by Taiyuan Mining Import and Export Co Ltd and was meant for Cosmos Engineering in Pakistan, the officers mentioned.
The port officers, with particular intelligence, had alerted the Indian defence authorities who inspected the heavy cargo and reported their suspicions, after which the consignment was seized, the officers mentioned, including that the seizure falls underneath the prevention of doable proliferation by Pakistan and China.
CNC machines are mainly managed by a pc and produce a scale of effectivity, consistency and accuracy not doable manually. Since 1996, CNC machines have been included within the Wassenaar Arrangement — a world arms management regime aimed toward stopping the proliferation of kit with each civilian and navy makes use of. India is among the many 42 member international locations that alternate data on transfers of standard weapons and dual-use items and applied sciences.

This just isn’t the primary occasion when Indian port officers have seized such dual-use military-grade objects being shipped from China to Pakistan. In February 2020, China was supplying autoclave to Pakistan underneath the duvet of “industrial dryer”.
Cosmos Engineering, a Pakistani defence provider, has additionally been on a watchlist since March 12, 2022, when Indian authorities intercepted a cargo of Italian-made thermoelectric devices, as soon as once more on the Nhava Sheva port.
In June 2023, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) sanctioned three Chinese firms — General Technology Limited (autoclave provider to Pakistan), Beijing Luo Luo Technology Development, and Changzhou Utek Composite Company for its involvement in supplying missile-applicable objects to Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme.