P KRISHNAMOORTHY Vs. REGIONAL PASSPORT OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner, who was the holder of passport bearing L-2317216, had renewed the same after the expiry of its validity. On 10.11.2014, the first respondent had sought for clarification with the petitioner in connection with an adverse police verification. The petitioner had clarified that there was no criminal case pending against him and that he had not suppressed any vital information in his passport renewal application dated 31.05.2013.

(2.) Pursuant to the surrender notice, the petitioner was constrained to surrender his passport and on 15.03.2015, an another clarification was sought for with regard to the criminal case registered against the petitioner in Crime No.618 of 2012 on the file of the Melur Police Station. The petitioner by relying upon an order dated 20.11.2015 obtained from the concerned jurisdictional Magistrate, Melur clarified to the first respondent that he was not an accused in the said criminal case in Crime No.618 of 201 However, since the petitioner's request for return of the passport was not considered, he had earlier approached this Court seeking for a direction to the respondents to dispose of his case and by an order dated 06.08.2014, this Court had observed that if the petitioner is not an accused in any criminal case, the first respondent herein should pass an order after obtaining report from the concerned police station, within two weeks. Since the order of this Court was not complied with, a contempt petition came to be filed in Cont.P.(MD)No.1026 of 2016. It is the case of the petitioner that in order to circumvent the contempt proceedings, the impugned order dated 03.08.2016 came to be passed rejecting his application on the ground that it violates Section 10(3)(e) of the Indian Passports Act, 1967.

(3.) The learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner was not an accused in Crime Nos.618 and 160 of 2012 and the same has been reiterated by the learned Judicial Magistrate, Melur, Madurai District, in his order dated 20.11.2015 and as such, there was no basis for passing the impugned order since the same does not violate Section 10(3)(e) of the Indian Passports Act, 1967.