India, June 27 -- The Bombay high court on Wednesday observed that persons staying abroad with no clear intention of returning to India would be treated as "persons resident outside India" under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA), and upheld a penalty of Rs.1.4 crore against a family which purchased a huge amount of shares from an Indian company without prior appeal to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The case dates back to the mid-1990s, when a series of share transactions was carried out by the Shroff family and its company Sujay Trading Corporation Pvt Ltd. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on November 18, 1999, had served the family with a notice, stating that Shroff's daughters, who were residents of the United States, had pu...