The Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the police to return luxury cars, which were seized from a mall in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) on January 26 this year. The impounded cars included luxury models from Porsche, Mercedes, Ferrari, Audi, Lamborghini, Jaguar and BMW.
BKC police directed to immediately return the cars to their owners
A division bench of Justices Anuja Prabhudessai and Nitin Borkar directed the BKC police to immediately return the cars to their owners while hearing petitions by several of the owners seeking the return of the cars and quashing the FIRs filed against them.
Lawyers for the owners, Aabad Ponda, Sudatt Patil and Kedar Patil, submitted that the cars were illegally detained in gross violation of the legal procedure.
Details of the case
The BKC police had seized 41 high-end cars and booked 43 people for violating unlawful assembly orders. The police claimed that an order prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons from Jan 23-24 was issued, ahead of Republic Day. The prohibitory order was till February 2.
The cars were to participate in a rally, organised by an event management company to celebrate Republic Day. It was to start from BKC to Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, Atal Setu and back.
The police claimed that the rally breached the prohibitory orders. Hence the police took preemptive action by reaching the mall at BKC before the scheduled start of the rally at 6am. The rally, expected to include at least 100 cars, was halted by the police.
An FIR was filed against the owners and rally organisers under Section 188 (deliberate disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant) and relevant sections of the Maharashtra Police Act 1951. It alleged that there was no permission for such a rally.
However, the car owners alleged that the police acted high-handedly and failed to inform them about the prohibitory orders or the lack of permission. The petitions filed by the car owners will come up for hearing in due course of time, said Kedar Patil.
