Supreme court to examine if gold smuggling can be termed as 'terrorist activity'
New Delhi, Mar 09: The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a question whether the offence of gold smuggling can be termed as "terrorist activity" under provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
A bench of Justices RF Nariman and BR Gavai issued notice to Centre and National Investigating Agency (NIA) on a plea against an order of Rajasthan High Court, which had declined to quash the FIR registered by the probe agency under the offences of UAPA.
"Issue notice", the bench said in its order passed on Monday. The petitioner, Mohammad Aslam, who was caught smuggling over 1.5kg gold at Jaipur International Airport has sought stay of arrest, investigation and proceedings in the FIR lodged by the NIA under provisions of UAPA.
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The plea filed by advocate Aditya Jain said that after the case was transferred to NIA, it registered an FIR on the ground that the smuggling of the gold by Aslam was done with the intent to threaten the economic security and damaging the monetary stability of India.
Aslam contended that the second FIR registered by NIA after the first one lodged by the custom officials, was arbitrary and no prima facie case of economic terrorism was made out against him as alleged.
"The petitioner was not found to be connected with any terrorist or any extremist group and his background was not suspicious at all," his plea said.
Aslam
claimed
that
he
worked
as
labourer
on
contract
in
Saudi
Arabia
since
May
2018
but
during
the
outbreak
of
Coronavirus,
he
had
lost
his
job.
"During
this
time
of
distress,
one
person
named
Lal
Mohammad
contacted
present
petitioner
and
influenced
him
to
deliver
some
amount
of
gold
to
an
unknown
person
in
Jaipur
and
in
lieu
of
that
he
promised
to
book
a
return
ticket
to
Jaipur
and
offered
Rs.
10,000.
Since
the
present
petitioner
was
unemployed
and
desperate
for
money,
he
fell
into
the
trap
of
Lal
Mohammad
and
agreed
to
his
offer,"
the
plea
said.
Aslam said that NIA has nothing on record that the smuggled gold was to fund terrorism and section 15 of the UAPA specifically states that whoever does any act with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the economic security of India commits a terrorism act.
"The FIR is baseless on this ground and deserves to be quashed as the NIA could not show any such intent of the petitioner. Moreover any such act would not alone attract the offence under UAPA. The smuggling of gold should have been dealt under the corresponding provision of the Customs Act and not UAPA," his plea said.
He said that the NIA has registered the FIR on mere suspicion that the proceeds of gold smuggled might be used for financing terrorism in India.
"Even, if the petitioner had funded for smuggling of gold, it would not amount to any offence under the UAPA because an act done with the intention to cause damage to the economic security of India alone would attract the offence under UAPA," he said.