1 week Ago By Kenn Oliver
Article content About two months into what had been a rewarding “personal journey” in India, and after travelling through nearly a dozen airports, Canadian Tina Lewis was detained and almost sent to jail in the country’s Goa province after authorities there questioned a GPS device they found in her luggage. Lewis, a 51-year-old telemedicine nurse practitioner and wanderlust-fuelled ultra-marathon runner, was going through security at Dabolim International Airport ahead of a flight to Kerala on Dec. 5.
She was unaware the Garmin inReach Mini in her bag was prohibited under law. When discovered, Central Industrial Security Force officers at the naval base airport handed her over to local police who explained such devices aren’t permitted under a statute originally written in 1933, a quarter-century before mankind launched its first rudimentary satellites. Thankfully, Lewis avoided time behind bars, but she would spend the next six days and several thousand dollars tied up in the court system trying to get her passport back and resume her journey.
“I brought it all over the world with me and I use it, I have it on me all the time because I mountaineer and I do a lot of pretty technical, dangerous stuff in the mountains, sometimes solo,” Lewis told the National Post in a recounting of her cautionary tale. Multiple countries have bans or restrictions on satellite communication devices Lewis thought it was business as usual when she unpacked her bag of electronics for inspection at Dabolim that Thursday night. A CISF officer immediately pulled her aside where she explained, as she’d recently done at an airport in Kashmir, that it wasn’t a satellite phone, but a GPS device used only to keep loved ones apprised of her location and safety when out of cell service.
Garmin says the device is connected to the subscription-based Iridium satellite network and enables two-way text messaging using a connected mobile device and access to an around-the-clock SOS search and rescue monitoring centre, among other simpler GPS services like weather and maps. A fine print disclaimer notes some counties “prohibit the use of satellite communication devices.” “It is the responsibility of the user to know and follow all applicable laws in the jurisdictions where the device is intended to be used,” Garmin writes.
India is joined by the likes of China, Russia, Pakistan and a handful of other countries with varying restrictions to outright bans, per Global Rescue . The first officer escalated the matter to his superior, who Lewis said was “really upset” and proceeded to order a trio of female guards to watch over her while she waited over an hour for him to return. He did so with a group of armed men and told Lewis the matter was now in the hands of local police.
“So they’re walking me out of the airport, in a huge scene, like I’m a fugitive,” said Lewis, who is originally from Montreal but has called Colorado home for many years. At the local police outpost, Lewis said she was made to wait another two hours under supervision before being questioned by the commanding officer and his assistant. Her efforts to explain how two-way voice communication via her device isn’t possible went unheeded, and the officer cited the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act , the 91-year-old law which says possession of “any wireless telegraphy apparatus, other than a wireless transmitter,” is an offence punishable by a fine or up to three years imprisonment.
“He said this device is very specific to your location, so a missile could land exactly where this device is telling people where you are,” she recounted. Following the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, coordinated with the use of satellite phones, the country enacted stricter rules under the wireless Act and the 1885 Indian Telegraph Act . Satellite phones and the use of Iridium infrastructure without prior consent from government were banned outright following more attacks in 2011.
None of this was raised during their discussion, said Lewis. Regardless, at this point, she thinks the police will merely confiscate the device and send her on her way. Instead, Lewis is advised to get a lawyer.
She’s going to jail. Advised not to involve the Canadian Embassy in India Lewis immediately made contact with one of the few people she knows in India, “an extremely well-connected” man who helped arrange for a local lawyer to be sent her way. In the meantime, local police were pressuring her to get a lawyer and recommended someone who’d been “used in the past for these cases.
” “He showed up five minutes later ...
greasy hair, t-shirt, ripped jeans. He didn’t look the part of a lawyer,” said Lewis, noting she was immediately uncomfortable with him. He laid out some options for her, but before long, a female lawyer sent by the acquaintance arrived and consulted with Lewis before bailing her out and arranging to deal with the matter on Friday.
Lewis also took the second lawyer’s advice and chose not to contact the Canadian Embassy, warned it could drag things on for months. “In the meantime, national security found out about this because CISF told them and the (Digital Communications Commission), so the police had to send me to court just to show that they did the due diligence,” Lewis said, figuring it would be a simple process. Upon arrival at the courthouse, she learned police had already appointed their recommended lawyer to her case, but her other lawyer was also present.
A seven-hour day inside a courtroom with no air conditioning passed without either of the attorneys being called to present the case. When the case was finally called on Saturday, the judge told Lewis’s police-appointed lawyer it required further review and postponed the matter until Tuesday when the court re-opened following a regular closure on Sunday and a holiday on Monday. The police-appointed lawyer failed to show up Tuesday, but her other lawyer did and promptly stepped in.
“She kind of took over and got the paperwork that needed to be done. We never even had to present the case.” Lewis’ punishment outside of losing the GPS? A fine of 662 rupees.
The equivalent of $11 CAD. Her passport, however, remained at the police station near the airport, and she had to reacquire it herself. “It kind of gave me a little post-traumatic stress going back there,” Lewis said.
The National Post has contacted airport police and the CISF for comment and more information. https://www.instagram.
com/p/DDnjTfqSGY3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Several other people arrested with satellite phones, GPS devices It took Lewis a few days to decompress from the ordeal, which cost her thousands more in legal fees and other expenses, but having already fallen in love with India, she wasn’t going to let it ruin her stay, and she travelled through the same airport on her way to Kochi shortly after. She’s now based in Himachal Pradesh in the western Himalayan mountain range — “Where I actually need a GPS for safety,” she noted — and has no plans to leave India soon. Since her experience and taking her story public on social media, Lewis has read similar accounts of other travellers detained or worse for similar reasons, many of whom have contacted her seeking advice.
Others, who routinely travel with their Garmin GPS devices have contacted her with thanks for helping them avoid ending up in the same situation. “People don’t know and people are getting arrested almost daily. I’m getting a message almost every single day,” she said.
A few days after Lewis’s incident, Martin Polesny, a Czech national leaving Manohar International Airport in northern Goa, was held in a cell for 12 hours and fined for having a Garmin Edge 540 GPS-enabled bike computer in his bags. Around the same time, Joshua Ivan Richardson, an American tourist flying out of Jollygrant Airport in Dehradun in possession of a satellite phone, was arrested . The outcome of his case is unclear.
Another man, whom Lewis said contacted her, had been arrested with a satellite phone at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi . Meanwhile, the Scottish Sun and multiple other media outlets have covered the story of Heather Mackins, a Scottish woman arrested on New Year’s Day after security at the Indira Gandhi found the same inReach Mini as Lewis’ in her bags. She was released but also had to return to court and remains, per her Instagram, in India.
Even though it’s all behind her now, Lewis feels that not only should Garmin do a better job of making people aware of the handful of countries where the devices are restricted, but India should consider a more balanced approach to its restrictions. “I think this outdated law from 1933 should be challenged at a higher court.” Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary.
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