Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has allowed an NRI to visit his elderly parents in India, thereby nullifying the ban imposed on him by the immigration authorities citing his involvement in a child pornography case in the US. In 2018, the NRI was notified by immigration authorities that he is not allowed to visit India to meet his parents -- father aged 93 years, and mother aged 88 years -- who are currently staying in Mumbai.
The NRI thereafter decided to appeal to the Bombay High Court, demanding that the Indian government be directed to remove his name from the list of 'morally challenged' people banned from entering the country. Claiming that the ban has been imposed on him on false grounds, he clarified that though he had pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in 2013 in the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, he had later filed a plea that the court had accepted and sent him on probation, thereby terminating his 5-year-long jail term.
The NRI, who moved to the US in 1990, further submitted to the court that the state of Connecticut had issued his discharge plan in 2018, certifying that he had successfully completed sex offender treatment and no new violations or arrests were on his criminal record thereafter.
The petitioner further argued that he had visited Mumbai on several occasions during the intervening period between the prosecution and the travel ban imposed on him. He claimed to have visited India once in June 2013, thrice in 2015, once in 2016, 2017, and once in early 2018, before it was abruptly banned on August 31, 2018, after he arrived at the Mumbai Airport.
Petitioner's counsel Mayur Khandeparkar argued that the NRI was denied entry to India on "baseless" grounds. "The petitioner was found with child pornography. He has never been charged in any child molestation case," the lawyer said, adding that the central government's contention was not entirely correct, while it has also ignored the probation development.
The high court bench headed by Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice R.N. Laddha, after listening to all the arguments, observed that the NRI was found in possession of child pornography, and not for involvement in the making of it. "There is a difference between possessing child pornography material and sexually abusing a child," the court observed, granting him permission to visit his parents on the grounds that the nature of his crime is not as serious as it has been framed to be. The court also took into consideration the old age of his parents and their health needs.
However, the permission was granted provided the petitioner submitted an undertaking stating that he would not stay in India for more than four to six weeks from the date of entry. "This visit shall be limited to meeting his sick parents for their medical needs and for such incidental purposes, and the petitioner shall need to submit an undertaking stating the same every time he visits the country," the order stated. Against this backdrop, the high court directed the Central government to allow him to come to the city for a month in December this year.
