Chakravarthy Vadrevo vs The Administrator, Union ...
1986 Latest Caselaw 306 Del

JUDGMENT

D.K. Kapar, C.J.

(1) The two habeas corpus petitions, Cri. Writ 80/86 i.e. the present petition and Cri. Writ 50/86. arise out of the same incident and they are independent to some extent. The petitioner in this case Shri Chakravarthy Vadrevo was detained by an order dated 12-12-1985 issued under section 3(1) read with section 2(f) of the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, 1974 (COFEPOSA). The grounds of detention in both the cases are practically identical.

(2) From the grounds it would appear that the: petitioner traveling under the name of Padma Ram was apprehended on 20th November. 1984 at Palam Airport. He had come on a flight from Bangkok and bad cleared some goods worth Rs. 4250.00 at the customs but after clear

(3) He also mentioned the name of one Virender who, he had said, was the financer who used to come with Sunil for payment of customs duty for the goods brought by him. He also mentioned an incident involving release of a colour Tv on illegal documents by Sunil. There is a reference to a red diary in which he had named various persons including Sunil. At various other places he mentions the persons to whom he used to sell smuggled goods such as Virender Kumar Jain of Jain Cut Pieces and one DK. Jain and another brother S.L. Jain who used to buy the smuggled goods. All these persons were also examined by the Customs Officials. They also named Sunil. According to the petitioner's version, on this occasion when the went to Bangkok, he was supplied the button cells by a Chinese gentleman who had been paid by Sunil. His version was that he and Sunil had gone together to Bangkok but Sunil returned one day earlier. It is not necessary to repro- duce more of the grounds as the same are extensive and cover a number of persons.

(4) As far as the petitioner is concerned, the material against him consisted of actual recovery made from him.

(5) The grounds on which the detention is challenged is the fact that there is a great delay in passing of the detention order. The incident was in November, 1984 and the detention order was passed in December, 1985. According to the respondent the delay is not great in this case, as the petitioner was detained because of the likelihood of his going abroad again under some other false name and further indulging in the smuggling of contraband goods.

(6) There is an explanation of the delay. According to the counter affidavit, the proposal was received on 4-1-1985 while investigation was still going on. The case was placed before the screening committee on 16-2-1985 but the case could not be taken up. It was taken up on 14-3-1985 when the Customs Authorities stated that certain investigations were going on still. Virender Kumar's reply was received on 3-6-1985. Then several other cases were going on of which details are mentioned. The case of the respondent is that a lot of work is involved in each detention case such as completing the formalities of preparing grounds of detention orders, translation and so on. Even some of the documents relating to the case had not been received because the case was also going on in the court. The whole material was received on 15-10-1985 and thus the case could not be finalised till that date Then the matter was examined by the Law Department. The position that Sunil was still absconding was received on 8-11-1985. So, the orders were passed in early December. 1985. It was also pointed out that proposal for detaining 138 persons were received and orders were passed by the Administrator in 92 cases.

(7) No doubt, there is a delay if you take the date from the date of apprehension till the date of detention order. Still if there is flood of such cases and lot of documents are involved, we have no doubt that the delay has been explained in the present case. So, we cannot accept this ground of delay.

(8) We have particularly been persuaded to this view that the petitioner has travelled several times abroad and, therefore, the authorities were bound to enquire about the information of previous visits and so on. So, there had to be some delay. Also some other persons were involved who had to be examined. At the same time, Sunil was not apprehended at all. So, the verification of the facts took a long time. In any case, we do not think that this is a fit case for saying that the matter is a stale one. Keeping in view the fact that the petitioner was traveling on fake passports, there was nothing to prevent him from traveling on fake passports in future.

(9) The other grounds raised in the petition are in respect of noneupply of documents along with the grounds of detention. The ground about non-supply of documents is particularly vague in this case because there is a list of documents included along with the grounds of detention and there is practically no material to show that some documents were not given. In fact, the petition is silent about the other documents which were not supplied.

(10) The learned counsel for the petitioner has taken another ground to the effect that there was some document in the Hindi language which he does not understand and so translation should have been given to him. In answer to this, the respondents stated that the petitioner was educated in Delhi and he had taken B. Sc. examination from Delhi University in 1982. We arc not satisfied that the petitioner did cot know Hindi and only knew Telegu. It so happens that the petitioner is of South Indian extraction but it does not make that he does not know Hindi. There is no document showing that the petitioner ever asked for a Hindi translation of any Hindi document. We are of the view that this petition has to fail. as it is a clear case of apprehension and detection of contraband goods followed by disclosure which indicated that this had been done many times. The petition is accordingly dismissed.