The right to travel abroad is a fundamental right under Article 21, and unjust restrictions violate personal liberty, requiring reasonable conditions for accused individuals pending investigations.

ORDER :

N. SESHASAYEE, J.

“Of old sat Freedom on the heights,

The thunders breaking at her feet:

Above her shook the starry lights:

She heard the torrents meet.

That her fair form may stand and shine,

Make bright our days and light our dreams,

Turning to scorn with lips divine

The falsehood of extremes!”

- Alfred Tennyson

Introductory:

1.This batch of cases involves a common prayer: “Please let us travel abroad.” The land of their intended destination does not unwelcome them, but the land of their birth would not let them go. Are they so precious that the Executive Government, whose face in this litigation goes by the name the CBI, considers that the country cannot lose them? They surely are precious, for every life in this land is, but the restraint on them from travelling abroad has little to do with the value they may add as citizens of this country. It is the apprehension of the CBI, nay, almost its petrifying fear of once bitten eternally shy variety, that appears to have engulfed and gripped its psyche that it fears that these petitioners might flee the country, never to return.

2. The CBI wants them here. It has either completed its investigation or it may be underway. That is more on facts. It wants not just the petitioners, but many, almost everyone who have come under its scanner, to stay in India, because it needs their corpus to prosecute. But should prosecution involve persecution of one’s fundamental right to travel abroad?

3. This batch of cases is not the first of its kind, but one in the infinite sequence since the dawn of independent India. There have been incessant lectures by the Courts in this country to the Executive, but like a bad student, it comes before the court yet again for another lecture. The Constitution has enjoined the Courts with the unenviable responsibility of guarding the fundamental right to life and liberty of every person. The Courts are therefore, accustomed to lecture like pastors in the pulpit, irrespective of anyone listening them. Otherwise, how does one justify repeated pronouncements on the same genre on the same Constitutional philosophy? To lecture, therefore has become Courts’ job, and here is yet another lecture on right to travel abroad and its contours. After all, it helps atleast in the sustenance of the Courts’ confidence and hope that attitudinal correctives may still happen within the Executive. The larger object is that an avoidable litigation should be avoided, and here the Executive and its arm in the bureaucracy have a major role to play. Let it now get ready for one more lecture.

Facts

4. The facts involved in these cases may not have great relevance in the context of the right involved in them, yet, a contextual setting for the cases will be enabled only if the minimum facts atleast are introduced. They are tabulated below :