The Bombay High Court recently ordered the release of Agisilaos Demetriades, brother of Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal’s partner Gabriella Demetriades, an accused in a drugs case after finding that the grounds for detention supplied to him were in Hindi which he couldn’t understand.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Prithviraj Chavan quashed the detention order under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PIT-NDPS) Act observing, “Non-supply of the translated version of the ground of detention would indeed tantamount to not serving the grounds of detention to the detenu and would, thus, vitiate the detention.”
The detention was quashed on September 16, but the detailed 23-page order was made available on Friday.
On April 21 this year, Demetriades, a South African national, was detained by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) from Goa pursuant to a detention order issued on September 21, 2021.
He was detained as part of preventive action initiated by the Mumbai unit of the NCB, considering he has three cases registered against him for possession of drugs.
Demetriades challenged his detention in the court contending that he had no knowledge of Hindi. The NCB contended that he was represented by an advocate who had translated the Hindi documents to a language he understood.
The Court noted from the panchnama that the accused had refused to sign the pages while conspicuously endorsing that ‘I am being forced to sign this document on the 22/04/22’. This, the court deduced, falsified the NCB’s contention as there was no other reason for him to endorse as above.
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