Kolkata: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a PIL filed by a customs officer seeking a probe into the 2019 incident at Kolkata airport when Rujira Banerjee, wife of Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, and her sister Maneka Gambhir were intercepted by customs officers while they were returning from Bangkok.
Raj Kumar Barthwal, the customs official, claimed in his PIL that Bengal police obstructed customs officers in the course of their duties when they tried to search Rujira and her sister. The SC questioned the customs officer's locus standi in the PIL and asked him to deposit Rs 10 lakh, which would be forfeited if he failed to argue his case. Following this, the PIL was withdrawn.
Justice Dipankar Dutta and Justice Manmohan asked additional solicitor general Suryaprakash V Raju, who was representing Barthwal, why a customs officer, and not the customs department or the Centre, approached the court on this issue.
Rujira's advocate Sanjay Basu said, "The SC stated that if the petitioner wishes to proceed, he must deposit Rs 10 lakh with the court, which would stand forfeited if the petitioner failed. This underscored the court's cautious approach towards frivolous PILs being filed without substantial legal standing."
Incidentally, the customs department had filed a police complaint on this issue before. The complaint was disposed of in a police final report in the court on Sept 24, 2020. "The police, upon scrutinising all evidence, statements of witnesses, and seizure of items, could not find any tangible evidence to establish the allegations made in the complaint filed by the complainant, S K Biswas, assistant commissioner of customs," said a senior officer.
In a separate order in June 2020, the Calcutta High Court quashed the summons issued by the customs department under Section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962, to Rujira and Maneka.