'Pending trial no reason to deny passport indefinitely'

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that passport authorities cannot indefinitely deny renewal of a passport merely because criminal proceedings are pending against an individual, underlining that the right to travel abroad and the right to hold a passport are integral facets of the right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

- Utkarsh Anand

The court was hearing an appeal filed by a person accused in a NIA case.

(ANI)

A bench of justices Vikram Nath and AG Masih held that ‘once criminal courts, fully aware of the pending cases, permit renewal of a passport subject to safeguards, the passport authority cannot refuse renewal on a speculative apprehension that the individual may misuse the document.

“To refuse renewal on such speculative apprehension is, in effect, to second-guess the criminal courts’ assessment of risk and to assume for the passport authority a supervisory role which the statute does not envisage,” said the bench.

The court allowed an appeal filed by Mahesh Kumar Agarwal, an accused in a National Investigation Agency (NIA) case relating to alleged extortion and funding of a proscribed organisation in Jharkhand’s coal mining areas, and set aside judgments of the Calcutta high court that had upheld the refusal to renew his passport.