Carrying 3 laptops (1 new and 2 old) in hand luggage to India

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Warning: this answer is not based on experience in India, but rather experience with importing goods in other countries. I suppose this knowledge is transferable but you definitely want a more India-experienced answer.

Make sure you can prove to the custom what you are saying regarding where you bought the laptop, one laptop overheating & so on. Bills (or copies/photos of bills) should be good.

The "I want to buy another laptop as a gift for my friend" part seems a bit risky, be prepared to come up with a good story! Maybe say that one laptop is a work laptop, while the other 2 are personal.

You might want to look at taxation on imported goods in India, if there is one, I would not declare the fact that I just bought 2 out of the 3 laptops I am bringing in (importing) are new. Make it look not new: remove all the packaging, install a couple of softwares, add a custom background image, add some music & videos on the hard drive.

Edit

My tax-import avoidance strategy (see above) is probably the simplest strategy but is often seen very negatively. However, when buying a computer in the 1st place you already pay a tax. So I'm not sure it's so bad to avoid paying double taxation on the imported laptop.

Best strategy if you want to be all in harmony with the local legislation is probably to get a tax refund in the country where you buy the laptop (this can be a bit complicated & slow), & then pay the import tax in India.

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