AI Drafter 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2018 (9) TMI 586
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....etitioner is that he has not yet been served with a copy of the aforementioned detention order. Therefore, prayer (b) in the writ petition is for a direction to the respondents to place on record the said detention order. 3. The background facts as set out in the petition are that the petitioner, among others things, is a National Sports Shooter and a Member of the National Shooting Association in Slovenia. After 2004, he left business and apparently worked in an Austrian company engaged in the selling/production of arms, weapons and ammunitions as a Manager from 2004 till 2006. In 2007, he left this company as well and is stated to have opened a gun shop inside a shooting range in Maribor, which is about 25 kms away from his home town. Initially, he sold weapons to mainly Slovenian buyers. Later as shooters came for practice from all over the world to the said shooting range, he got acquainted with many of them from various countries and this included some Indian shooters as well. The petitioner is stated to have closed the gun shop, and begun to travel to various parts of the world as a travel agent. It is stated that the petitioner's wife is the only Director of the Comp....
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....n this regard are updated online and payment is accepted through electronic exchange only and hence under invoicing was not possible. 7. On 15th May 2017, the petitioner applied for bail in which he also retracted the statement made by him to the DRI and stated specifically that he was not concerned with the invoices and transactions shown to him. He claimed that the documents were falsely manipulated to implicate him. The petitioner's bail application was rejected by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ('CMM') on 18th May, 2017. Thereafter, the petitioner filed a bail application before the Learned Sessions Judge on 2nd June, 2017. By order dated 8th June, 2017, the Learned Sessions Judge also rejected the bail application. 8. After he had completed a period of sixty days in custody, the petitioner was granted statutory bail under Section 167(2) Cr PC by an order dated 1st July 2017 of the CMM subject to the following conditions : "(i) That the I.O/DRI officers shall open the LOC against accused since the accused is a foreign national; (ii) That the accused shall not leave the territories of Delhi/NCR for the period of 30 day....
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....ustoms (Preventive), who adjudicated the above SCN dated 13th October, 2017 issued by DRI. In para 17 of the said order, it was noted that the present petitioner had appeared for personal hearing along with his Advocate on 24th October, 2017 and had submitted that "he has been cooperating all along and provided whatever information he had and that he had not been called by DRI since July, 2017 and therefore no valid reason was there for extending the date for issuance for SCN to him." The petitioner also pointed out to the Adjudicating Authority that in his written reply to the SCN he had denied the allegations levelled against him. He could not provide the documents sought by DRI as he was not an owner/Director of the supplier firm and that the supplier M/s. Mikos was barred from sharing official documents under Slovenian law. 12. In a portion titled 'Discussions and Findings', the Adjudicating Authority in the order dated 26th October, 2017 noted that the petitioner had been visiting India regularly and that he had been receiving payments on behalf of M/s. Mikos in cash. Enquiries were in progress to obtain the complete details of all the arms and ammunitions supplied by ....
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....ollowing order : "Crl. M.A. No. 3688/2018 1. The Counsel for the parties have been heard. 2. The Learned Counsel for the respondents states that he has instructions to oppose the prayer for interim relief on the ground that the petitioner has been absconding ever since the detention order dated 17th October, 2017 was passed. Nevertheless, the counsel is unable to dispute that the petitioner has in fact appeared before the Department of Customs on 24th October, 2017. The petitioner has disclosed his address as 'c/o Embassy of Slovenia'. The Court is informed that although letters have been written to the Slovenian Embassy for verification, the response is still awaited. 3. Further, the Learned Metropolitan Magistrate (MM) appears to have passed a conditional bail order on an application filed by the petitioner before that Court. It is stated that the said order has been challenged by the DRI in Crl. M.C. No. 4193/2017 which is pending before a Learned Single Judge of this Court. 4. It is not in dispute that the detention orders in respect of the three other co-noticees who were alleged to have engaged in smuggling of 'non-sport category' arms and a....
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....ommon to all four detenues i.e. Mr. Prashant Kumar Vishnoi, Mr. Amit Goel, Mr. Anil Kumar Langan and the petitioner. The grounds refer to all of them as 'you'. In other words, there is nothing in the grounds of detention that makes out a case separately against the petitioner which is different from the grounds of detention in respect of the other three detenues. 20. One of the first grounds urged in seeking the quashing of the detention order is therefore that with identical detention orders in respect of the other three detenues having already not been confirmed by the Advisory Board, no purpose would be served by keeping the detention order in respect of the petitioner alive. It is also pointed out that the petitioner has been cooperating with the authorities throughout and has not made any effort to violate any of the Court orders including the conditional order of bail. It is submitted that on the other hand, despite being aware of the fact that the petitioner was appearing before the Adjudicating Authority on 24th October, 2017 pursuant to the SCN issued by the DRI, no effort was made to serve the detention order on the petitioner and detain him. 21. At the he....
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....itioner has avoided the service of the detention order upon him. Otherwise, on merits it is not disputed that the grounds of detention are common to all the four detenues including the petitioner. 24. The Court has considered the above submissions. It would like to begin by referring to the following observations of the Supreme Court in Rajesh Gulati v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi (2002) 7 SCC 129. "It cannot be over emphasized that the object of detention under the Act is not to punish but to prevent the commission of certain offences. Section 3(1) of the Act allows the detention of a person only if the appropriate detaining authority is satisfied that with a view to preventing such person from carrying on any of the offensive activities enumerated therein, it is necessary to detain such person. The satisfaction of the detaining authority is not a subjective one based on the detaining authority's emotions, beliefs or prejudices. There must be a real likelihood of the person being able to indulge in such activities, the inference of such likelihood being drawn from objective data." 25. In the present case the facts not in dispute are that far from avoiding the proc....
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.... had provided sureties. A pointed question was asked by the Court to counsel appearing for the respondents whether any effort had been made by the Detaining Authority or the Delhi Police to contact the sureties provided by the petitioner to ascertain about his whereabouts. The answer was in the negative. 30. In K.P.M. Basheer v. State of Karnataka - (1992) 2 SCC 295, in similar circumstances where the detenue had been appearing before the Assistant Collector of Customs and no attempt had been made to detain him in those proceedings, the Supreme Court concluded that "the arresting officers did not take any real and genuine effort to secure and detain the appellant." The Supreme Court refused to accept the explanation "now offered stating that the appellant was fugitive, eluding the dragnet of the detention order ...because during the alleged period of search he has appeared before the Assistant Collector of Customs Bombay on two occasions during February, 1991, i.e. after passing of the detention order." 31. The Court would like to add that in the instant case, even when the DRI challenged the order dated 9th October, 2017 of the CMM before this Court, the petitioner....