RANJIT SINGH GREWAL Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Manjit Singh Grewal-detenu has filed that writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India read with Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, for quashment of the detention order dated June 9, 1988, passed by respondent No, 2 under Section 3(1) of the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, (for short COFEPOSA Act) The detention order has been made with a view to preventing the petitioner from acting in any manner prejudicial to the augmentation of foreign exchange.

(2.) On secret information being received in the month of April 1988, the residential premises of the detenu were searched on April 27, 1988 and Indian currency of the value of Rs. 2,75,000/- and certain incriminating documents and foreign currency were recovered from the bed room of the petitioners father. The documents so discovered disclosed the names and addresses of persons and the amounts paid to them. The statement of the petitioner was recorded under Section 40 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 and it was revealed that the services of the petitioner have been engaged by one Jit Singh, resident of England through one Rama Chandran of Pahar Ganj for making payments to different persons whose relations were non resident Indians. The modus operandi adopted was that the relations of different persons, who were non-resident Indians, were giving the foreign currency being earned by them to Jit Singh in England and lit Singh made arrangement for making the payments in Indian currency to the relations of those persons and the petitioner was to be the intermediary in making the payments and was to get Rs. 1,000/- for making payment of Rs. 1,00,000/-. It was revealed that the petitioner has distributed in this manner about Rs. 15,00,000/- (fifteen lakhs). The petitioner was arrested under Section 35 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 and was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate and was remanded to judicial custody. First application for bail was moved and was rejected by the court on April 29, 1988. Another application was moved before the Sessions Court which was also rejected on May 10, 1988. Another bail application was moved and vide order dated June 2, 1988, the bail was granted. In the grounds of detention, then facts have been given as to search having been effected on 42 persons of different places and the material seized showing the receipt of payments. The detention order is being challenged by the detenu on the following grounds: (I) that there has occurred delay in considering the representation of the petitioner made to the Central Government as well as the detaining authority; (ii) that the advisory Board has failed to record the statement of the petitioners father, who was produced as a witness, who was to explain the source of the Indian currency recovered from the petitioner; (iii) that the respondents supplied the documents to the petitioner belatedly and thus, the right of the petitioner to make an effective and purposeful representation was prejudiced; and (iv) that some of the documents supplied to the petitioner were illegible and thus, the right of the petitioner to make an effective representation was prejudicially affected.

(3.) Coming to the first point, it is pleaded by the petitioner that be had made representation dated June 30, 1988, to the detaining authority which has not been considered by the proper officer and the respondent should satisfy the Court as to who has rejected the representation of the petitioner. It is also pleaded by the petitioner that there has occurred delay in considering his said representation. In respect of the representation made to the Central Government, it is averred that the same was dated July 8, 1988 and the same had not been considered by the Central Government till the filing of the writ petition. The writ petition was filed on September 13, 1988. Shri S.K. Chowdhry, Under Secretary, Government of India, Ministry of Finance, has filed the affidavit in contesting the writ petition. It has been pleaded by him that the representation which was though dated June 30, 1988, was actually signed by detenu on July 11, 1988 and it was received in the Ministry of Finance on July 14, 1988 and was placed before the detaining authority on the following day and the detaining authority desired that the comments of the sponsoring authority i.e. Directorate of Enforcement, be called and thus, the representation Was sent to the said authority on July 15, 1988 and in the meanwhile, the petitioner had made a representation on which the date was not clear and it appears that the same was perhaps dated July 8, 1988 but the same was received in the Ministry of Finance from the Government of Punjab on July 26, 1988 and as the said representation was on similar lines as the previous representation made to the detaining authority, so the Directorate of Enforcement was required to prepare comments on both the representations and on July 27, 1988, the Directorate of Enforcement prepared the comments in respect of both the representations and dispatched the same on July 28, 1988. Only 30 31, 198 (Saturday Sunday) being holidays, thus on August 1, 1988, the representations were analysed and nothings were prepared and on August 2, 1 Y811, the detaining authority considered the representation and rejected the same and the memorandum containing the said rejection was issued to the petitioner on August 2, 1988. It was also pleaded that the noting in respect of the other representation was also prepared on August 2, 1988 and on August 3, 1988, the same was considered by the Minister of State who proposed for rejecting the said representation and the file was put up before the Finance Minister without delay and the Finance Minister on August 8, 1988, rejected the representation and memorandum of rejection was issued to the petitioner on August 9, 1938. It was clarified in the affidavit that the representations of the petitioner comprised of 13 pages each and in those representations the petitioner had asked for supply of copies of about 100 documents totaling about 500 pages and thus, the entire voluminous record had to be gone through by the Directorate of Enforcement in order to effectively consider the representations and also to see as to what documents have been already supplied and what documents were available for being supplied to the petitioner as requested by him in his representations. It was pleaded that only some of the documents asked for by the petitioner had been relied upon by the detaining authority and directions were given to the sponsoring authority for supplying the other documents to the detenu which were supplied to the detenu without any unreasonable delay.