Delhi HC upholds detention of man arrested at airport with drones, cigarettes, whiskey

The Delhi High Court has upheld the detention of a man who was arrested by Customs and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) at the Delhi Airport for smuggling foreign origin drones, prohibited cigarettes besides other things into the country.

Customs and DRI officers, during the baggage search of Gagan Jot Singh and his associate found commercial quantity of the foreign origin drones, camera, camera lenses, cigarettes, gaming console and whiskey bottles.

A bench of Justice Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal observed that the person was detained after due consideration of the evidence. The court dismissed a petition moved by the sister of the accused seeking his release.

"Detenue had been involved in smuggling of commercial quantities of drones, prohibited cigarettes, electronic items into India and had an inclination to indulge in such activities had he not been prevented from doing so," the court observed.

The court also rejected Gagan's plea seeking quashing of detention order dated March 11 and June 7 under Section 3(1) and Section 8 (f) of Conservation of Foreign Exchange (COFEPOSA). Under Section 8 (f) of COFEPOSA, the Central Government had confirmed the detention order.

It observed that the detaining authority had noted that even though the detenue was in judicial custody, there was a possibility of him being released on bail and continuing with illegal acts of smuggling.

"The same proves that the detaining authority had justifiable reasons to pass the impugned detention order to prevent the detenue from indulging in illegal acts," the court stated.

The counsel representing his sister, however, alleged that the concerned officer illegally "clubbed all the recoveries made from other passengers and attributed the same to the detenue".

The counsel also pointed out that since the drones were recovered from three checked-in bags with "no luggage tags", implantation of the same could not be ruled out.