Mumbai: Imran Khan has moved the Bombay High Court against a Mumbai Police order asking him to leave India by 28 October, days after he was briefly detained during a protest in the city. The 43-year-old actor, a US citizen and nephew of Aamir Khan, has also received a show-cause notice from the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) asking why his Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status should not be cancelled.
What the petition says
The plea, filed through advocate Zulfiquar Memon and MZM Legal, calls the police’s ‘Leave India Notice’ illegal, arbitrary, perverse and drastic. It asks the court to quash the notice, stay its operation while the petition is heard, and restrain the authorities from taking any coercive steps.
Khan denies that he participated in the gathering at August Kranti Maidan on 10 October. The petition says he has no association with the organisers, had not entered a restricted or barricaded area, and had not disobeyed any police order to leave the spot. It claims he was apprehended only after media persons surrounded him while he was returning to his parked vehicle.
The plea argues the police notice was issued within five days of the complaint, without disclosing reasons or supporting material, and without an inquiry, a show-cause notice, or an opportunity to respond. It describes the order as reflecting ‘patent non-application of mind’ and arbitrary targeting of a public figure.
The OCI question
While the challenge was being moved, the FRRO issued its own notice asking why Khan’s OCI status should not be revoked. His lawyer said the show-cause notice should have come before the police’s ‘abrupt and arbitrary’ leave order.
An OCI card lets foreign citizens of Indian origin live and work in India long term without taking full citizenship. The petition argues that no law or rule prohibits an OCI cardholder from participating in a peaceful protest, and that the notice does not cite any specific breach of the Immigration and Foreigners Act or the Citizenship Act.
What the police order rests on
Police have invoked Section 7(2)(C) and Section 29 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, which deal with restricting the movement of foreign nationals and enforcing their removal. Khan is required to leave on or before 28 October; after that, deportation proceedings under Section 29 may begin.
At the protest, demonstrators were demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the SIR issue. Khan’s petition says he learned through media reports that an FIR had been registered against him and that he has lived in India since the age of two, with deep familial, marital, educational and professional ties and no criminal antecedents.
What happens next
The plea is expected to be mentioned urgently before a division bench of Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait Sethna. For Hindi film fans, the case turns a familiar face into a wider legal question: how immigration powers are used against foreign citizens who have spent nearly their whole lives in India.
- Deadline: 28 October, unless the court grants a stay.
- What the plea wants: quashing of the leave notice and protection from coercive steps.
- Parallel risk: an FRRO show-cause over Khan’s OCI status.
Source: Filmibeat