E-Paper
Zimbabwe student en-route to Ludhiana held for carrying live cartridge in luggage
A 20-year-old woman from Zimbabwe was arrested at Mumbai airport for carrying a live cartridge in her baggage. She was travelling to India on a student visa.
MUMBAI: A 20-year-old woman from Zimbabwe was arrested for carrying a live cartridge in her baggage at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on Sunday.
The woman who hails from Ndanga, a sub-district in Masvingo Province in Zimbabwe, was travelling to India on a student visa and was supposed to join a medical laboratory science course in Ludhiana.
The Sahar police officials received the information from the airport security officials on Sunday afternoon. The woman was to board a flight from Mumbai to New Delhi around 7am on Sunday. Officials found a suspicious object during the screening of her check-in baggage around 5am. Upon her physical check, officials found a live cartridge in the bag.
“Security personnel interrogated her about whether she had a licence to carry the ammunition she had in her bag. She could not provide any satisfactory response to their queries. As she was carrying the ammunition without the necessary permissions, the woman was booked under the relevant sections of the Arms Act,” said an official from Sahar police. He added that she was produced in court on Monday after which she was sent to police custody.
The woman was travelling to India on a student visa to join a college in Ludhiana to pursue a bachelor’s degree in medical laboratory technology, informed her counsel advocate Prabhakar Tripathi. “She flew in from Harare, the capital of her country and her flight had taken a halt before landing in Mumbai. In both places, the check-in baggage would have been screened. However, the ammunition was not found in the screenings at two different airports,” he pointed out.
He claimed that the bullet was planted in the bag of his client as it was found in one of the zip pockets on the outside of the bag. “Would she be so careless to carry ammunition in a pocket where people keep sanitisers?,” asked Tripathi during his client’s court appearance. He pleaded the court to consider a previous Bombay high court judgement which said that the mere possession of ammunition does not be grounds to punish a person under the Arms Act, but there needs to be knowledge and intent behind carrying a weapon or ammunition which also need to be considered before booking a person.
Tripathi said the woman is from a very poor family; her mother is a farmer, and her father is a primary school teacher. “The entire village got together to raise funds to send the woman to study in India as she is very good in academics,” said Tripathi, who is in touch with the woman’s family in Zimbabwe. He said that the distraught family says they have no resources to pursue a legal case in India, or even to get their daughter a plane ticket home.
