MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Regional Passport Officer of Madurai to re-issue the passport of a Tenkasi-based man, saying that the registration of an FIR against him cannot be a reason for not issuing his passport.
Ashik Abdullah, a resident of Tenkasi, approached the court saying he was issued a passport on January 9, 2017. After the pages of his passport were exhausted, he had applied at the Madurai passport office on October 20, 2021 to re-issue his passport.
During the verification process, the Kadayam Police submitted to the passport office that an FIR was registered against Abdullah under Sections 294(b) (punishment for singing, reciting or uttering obscene songs, ballad or words, in a public place), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 324 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the IPC on January 29, 2020. Citing the FIR, the passport office had refused the re-issuing of the passport to the petitioner.
Justice C V Karthikeyan said the FIR is only information about the commission of an offence and after investigation, police can even drop the allegations. “Even if the final report is filed spelling out the allegations against an accused, the petitioner is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty until the trial is over,” the judge observed. Hence, the judge directed the Regional Passport Officer to complete the process of re-issuing the passport by January 15, 2022, and handing it to Abdullah.
Only in-person hearings from Jan 3
The Madras High Court on Tuesday said that until further orders, only physical hearings will be held from January 3 at the principal seat in Madras and at the Madurai Bench. This was stated in a notification issued by Registrar General P Dhanabal. Owing to the pandemic, the court went online in March 2020 and remained so till February this year, when physical hearing was resumed, partially. With the second wave of the Covid outbreak, however, physical hearings were again suspended and the court went completely online again. It resumed only when the second wave subsided