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A view of the Madras High Court at Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: K. PICHUMANI
The Madras High Court has come across a shocking incident of a case bundle having gone missing from its Registry for 11 years, after the petitioner obtained an interim injunction in 2011 against execution of a 2010 order passed by the State government to detain him under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA) Act of 1974.
The Second Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and N. Anand Venkatesh refused to disallow the writ petitioner, S. Zahir Hussain, from undergoing the detention on the ground raised by him that the circumstances which necessitated his detention in 2010 do not exist any more due to the passage of time. It said, the petitioner cannot take “unfair advantage” of the 2011 interim order.
The judges pointed out that the petitioner had started a proprietary concern in 2000 to import car accessories. He also claimed to be a public spirited person who exposed rampant corruption in the customs department. Since he had been a whistleblower, he accused an Additional Director General of Revenue Intelligence of having conspired to detain him.
On the other hand, Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan brought it to the notice of the court that the petitioner had been accused of having organised the illegal import of imitation stones by undervaluing them and thereby indulging in duty evasion of ₹1.17 crore. Further, he was facing charges for having threatened and attacked customs officials and other government officers.
The State government had passed the detention under the COFEPOSA Act on December 30, 2010 on the basis of the recommendation made by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. However, the order could not be executed since the petitioner absconded, the ASG said and referred to a notification issued on March 30, 2011 declaring him as an absconding accused.
Petitioner’s wife files petition challenging detention order
In the meantime, his wife filed a writ petition challenging the detention order but withdrew the case in August 2011. Thereafter, the petitioner himself filed the present petition and obtained an interim injunction. Though all the respondents in the case filed their counter affidavits in January 2012, the case could not be taken up for final disposal because the bundle went missing.
“After a lot of effort, it was traced and the writ petition was posted for final hearing before us. We are not getting into the issue as to who was responsible for the disappearance of the case bundle… Even assuming that the court was the cause for the delay in taking up the writ petition for final hearing, the said fault cannot be put against the respondents,” the judges wrote..
Though the petitioner had asserted that he never went absconding and relied upon newspaper reports to claim that he was attending public events , the Bench said: “If really the petitioner was not absconding at the relevant point of time, it defies common sense as to why the petitioner did not file the first writ petition and instead, made his wife to file the same.”
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