TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1986 (8) TMI 315
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....nal Secretary to the Government of India, in regard to the petitioner under section 3(1) of the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA) Act, 1974 (as amended up to date) with a view to preventing him from abetting the smuggling of goods, engaging in transporting, concealing and keeping and dealing in smuggled goods, and the petitioner was ordered to be detained and kept in custody in the Central Jail, Tihar, New Delhi. 2. The grounds of detention against the petitioner allege that there was an information that a notorious smuggler Rajpal @ Babu resident of 36, Shastri Park, Chander Nagar, Delhi, was a prominent member of an international syndicate of smugglers and was receiving gold biscuits fro....
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....ncy was seized under the Customs Act, 1962. 4. The only contention raised by Mr. Harjinder Singh learned counsel for the detenu during the course of arguments was that when the petitioner was produced before the Advisory Board on 29th April, 1986 from Jail, he submitted before the Advisory Board that he had brought his witnesses viz. Thaneshwar Singh, Sunder Pal Singh, Pawan Kumar, Balvinder Kumar and Vikram Singh and that they would rebut the allegations made against him in the grounds of detention and especially that Thaneshwar Singh and Sunder Pal Singh would prove that the amounts of Rs. 1,70,000/- and Rs. 40,000/- seized by D.R.I, were all accounted for money and not sale proceeds, but those witnesses were not examined by the Adviso....
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....o requested that the witnesses may be examined to rebut the grounds of detention, but the Advisory Board rejected the request for production of witnesses on the ground that those witnesses were not going to depose anything which may affect their opinion and that the sum of Rs. 40,000/- had already been returned to the persons to whom the same belonged. The opinion of the Advisory Board has also been perused and the same also supports the aforesaid averments in the counter-affidavit. The right of rebuttal by production of oral as well as documentary evidence by the detenu before the Advisory Board has been recognised in AIR 1982 Supreme Court 710 (supra). Had the Advisory Board recorded the statements of the witnesses brought by the detenu o....
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....en the Advisory Board opines no sufficient cause for the detention, the appropriate Govt. is bound to revoke the detention order and cause the detenu to be released forthwith, but when the Advisory Board favours the detention, that opinion is not binding on the appropriate Govt. which has been vested, on the other hand, with the discretion to confirm or not to confirm the detention order. In this view of the matter even if the Advisory Board had opined in favour of the detention, the appropriate Govt. could have differed from the same on the basis of the material sought to be produced by the detenu before the Advisory Board on the date of hearing and who were also admittedly present on that day. 7. Mr. Harjinder Singh has also relied upo....