Conservation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling activities act, 1974 (cofeposa)

•   An Act to provide for preventive detention in certain cases for the purposes of conservation and augmentation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling activities and for matters connected therewith.
•   Whereas violating of foreign exchange regulations and smuggling activities are having an increasingly deleterious effect on the national economy and thereby a serious adverse effect on the security of the State.
• And whereas having regard to the persons by whom and the manner in which such activities or violations are organized and carried on, and having regard to the fact that in certain areas which are highly vulnerable to smuggling, smuggling activities of a considerable magnitude are clandestinely organized and carried on, it is necessary for the effective prevention of such activities and violations to provide for detention of persons concerned in any manner therewith.
• COFEPOSA is not a punitive Act. It does not empower authority to punish a person without trial.
• It provides preventive detention of person, before engaging in smuggling activities.
• A person can be detained under provisions of the Act, on the basis of suspicion that he will be engaged in smuggling activities but the detention must be followed both substantively and procedurally by detaining authorities.
• Reddish vs. Government of Andhra Pradesh (2012) 2 SCC 389 it was held that preventive detention is not to punish a person for something he has done but preventing him from doing it.
• Sadhu Roy vs. State of West Bengal 1975(1) SCC 660; it was held that discharge or acquittal by a Criminal Court is not necessarily a bar to preventive detention on the same facts for security purposes.