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Louise Thomas
Editor
A court in India has ordered the customs department to pay Rs1m (£9,250) to a Chinese woman stuck in the country since being wrongly arrested in 2019.
Cong Ling, 38, a mother of two children, was arrested at the Mumbai airport in 2019 for allegedly smuggling gold worth £277,524 into the country.
She was acquitted in October 2023 but remained stuck in India after the customs department refused to give her a no-objection certificate while it challenged the lower court’s ruling.
On Friday, the Bombay high court directed the customs department to issue a no-objection certificate so Ms Cong could obtain an exit permit to leave India within a week.
The court said the “unnecessary victimisation and harassment" of Ms Cong would "reflect in bilateral relations between two countries”.
It said the compensation amount shall be recovered from the salaries of the customs officials responsible, The Indian Express reported.
"This is nothing but victimising the petitioner without any reason," the court said.
The conduct of the customs officials was “wrongful, vindictive, reprehensible” and amounted to “gross abuse of their powers”, it added.
The ruling noted that the "state has an obligation to protect the liberty of such foreigners who come to this country and ensure that their liberty isn’t deprived except in accordance with the procedure established by law".
"Notwithstanding the said guarantee under Article 21 of the constitution, in this case, the customs department acted in a most brazen and perfunctory manner."
Ms Cong said she took a flight to Delhi from Beijing on 12 December 2019 but the aircraft was forced to land in Mumbai due to bad weather in the capital.
She was intercepted by customs officials at the Mumbai airport who examined her baggage and allegedly found 10 bars of 24-carat gold. She was arrested shortly after on charges of smuggling.
She was acquitted of the charges by a magistrate court on 10 October 2023. The acquittal was later upheld by a sessions court.
But the customs department denied Ms Chong’s application for an exit permit, forcing her to spend nearly five years in India away from her daughters.
In 2017, a former Chinese army surveyor was allowed to go home after being trapped in India for more than 50 years.
Wang Qi claimed he had accidentally crossed the border into India in 1963 and was unable to leave because he wasn’t given the correct exit visa.
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