The Madras High Court has directed the Chennai Regional Passport Office to dispose of the passport application of A G Perarivalan, one of the convicts in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, within four weeks, as reported in Times of India.
Justice P T Asha passed the order while hearing a petition filed by Perarivalan seeking the expeditious processing of his passport application, which has reportedly been pending for nearly two years.
Perarivalan, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, was released in May 2022 following a Supreme Court order.
His counsel told the court that despite completing all necessary formalities and cooperating with the authorities, his passport application had remained pending for almost two years. He had also submitted a representation on September 1 seeking early disposal of the application, but the authorities had taken no action.
The counsel further submitted that the delay was causing considerable hardship to Perarivalan, particularly as it was affecting his plans to travel abroad for higher studies.
The passport authorities had reportedly withheld the application pending a police verification report.
However, Justice Asha observed that since Perarivalan had been set at liberty by the Supreme Court, the passport authority’s reluctance to process his application solely on the ground that it was awaiting a police report was not justified.
The court also referred to a Supreme Court Full Bench ruling in the Jawahar Rajan case, which clarified that the pendency of a criminal case would not, by itself, constitute an absolute bar to the issuance of a passport.
The High Court directed the passport authorities to treat the counter-affidavit filed by the Jolarpettai police as the police verification report and dispose of Perarivalan’s passport application within four weeks.
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