Section 105 — Power to search premises

2-minute view

Section 105 permits the Assistant/Deputy Commissioner (or specially empowered frontier/coastal officer) to authorise or personally conduct search of a place where there is reason to believe confiscable goods or relevant documents/things are secreted. It imports criminal-procedure search safeguards with the statutory modification specified in the section. The Supreme Court’s Gopikisan Agarwal decision remains a foundational authority on this Customs search power: the authorisation must be tied to the statutory belief, even though the information itself may require confidentiality.

Statutory position and legal effect

Chapter XIII contains coercive investigative powers and therefore demands stricter source discipline than an ordinary procedural chapter. Personal search under sections 100–103, arrest under section 104, premises/conveyance search under sections 105–106, examination/summons under sections 107–108, information returns, controlled delivery, seizure, provisional release and post-investigation transfer each have different statutory triggers. The file must preserve officer empowerment, objective reasons, authorisation, witnesses/inventory, digital evidence, communication to the affected person and the later notice/adjudication chronology. Current constitutional safeguards, especially the Supreme Court’s 2025 Radhika Agarwal judgment, must be read alongside the Act and CBIC instructions.

Enforcement powers should be documented as a chain of legal authority: trigger → empowered officer → reasons/authorisation → execution safeguards → evidence custody → affected-person communication → notice/adjudication/prosecution. Mixing these stages creates both litigation risk and evidentiary weakness. Older Customs judgments remain important but must be version-checked because officer assignment, notice periods and arrest/provisional-release law have changed. High-stakes decisions should cite the current statute first and case law second. For section 105 specifically, the controlling question is whether the facts satisfy the legal trigger described above and whether the record proves each step in the workflow. A practitioner should also search later amendments/case treatment from the review date to the transaction date before filing an opinion, declaration, reply or appeal.

Official-text rule: This page explains the current provision and its evidence architecture; pleadings and transaction execution should quote the official India Code/Gazette text and the exact delegated instrument in force on the material date.

Applicability, rights, obligations and decision workflow

Principal users: Businesses, residences/warehouses and other premises subject to Customs search; authorising and executing officers.

1. Confirm the authorising officer’s statutory rank/empowerment.
2. Record material supporting reason to believe that specified goods/documents/things are secreted at the place.
3. Issue/retain search authorisation with place and objective scope.
4. Follow applicable criminal-procedure safeguards, witnesses, inventory and digital-evidence protocols.
5. Record seizure/copying and return/sealing of records.

For section 105, the evidentiary file should be designed before the event, not reconstructed only after a dispute. The minimum record to preserve is: Reason-to-believe record; Search authorisation; Witness/panchnama; Inventory; Forensic image/hash and custody log. Each item should be tied to date, officer/party and system/document reference. Where an electronic system is used, preserve acknowledgement/timestamp and any later amendment rather than a screenshot alone.

Rules, notifications, circulars and operational instruments

The table maps general instruments found relevant to this section. Tariff/product/port/officer-specific notifications remain a material-date search item and should not be inferred from this list.

Case law — provision-specific research matrix

Court decisions are version-sensitive. No case citation is invented where no direct authority was found; connected authorities are used only where they genuinely illuminate the provision.

Evidence and compliance checklist

• Reason-to-believe record
• Search authorisation
• Witness/panchnama
• Inventory
• Forensic image/hash and custody log

Common mistakes and professional traps

• Search based only on a vague fishing inquiry.
• Authorisation by an officer lacking section 105 competence.
• Seizing unrelated material without recording relevance.
• Breaking digital evidence chain.

The common-error list is not cosmetic. Each error corresponds to a distinct failure mode that can change duty, confiscation, penalty, evidence or jurisdiction. In a review file, convert each listed trap into a yes/no control and record the source used to close it. This is especially important where a historical judgment is cited: the section wording and delegated instrument in force on that judgment date may differ materially from 2026 law.

Finin2min Q&A