Look Out Circulars should not end up violating fundamental right to grow and prosper: Madras HC

Madras High Court. File
| Photo Credit: K. Pichumani

Observing that Look Out Circulars (LOC) issued to prevent individuals from travelling abroad should not end up violating the fundamental right to grow and prosper, the Madras High Court on Friday (December 6, 2024) ordered that investigating agencies must focus on making the individuals concerned return to the country to face prosecution instead of imposing a blanket ban on travel altogether.

Justice N. Seshasayee prescribed a procedure, similar to bail conditions, for the suspension of the LOC and said that individuals could be permitted to travel abroad freely by directing them to furnish security and provide surety, besides ordering the sureties to deposit their passports. Such a course of action would help balance the interests of the individuals as well as the prosecution, he said.

The orders were passed while allowing writ petitions filed by a Company Secretary Pathan Apser Hussen and a businessman Jeevanandam Rajesh alias Saravanan, who had challenged the ban imposed on their foreign travel due to pending criminal cases. The Bureau of Immigration under the Union Home Ministry had issued LOCs against them at the instance of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Looking at the issue from the prism of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the judge said, the Supreme Court of the United States had championed the right to travel abroad as a facet of liberty and the Supreme Court of India had drawn generous inspiration from the American jurisprudence. He said, the fundamental right to life, guaranteed under Article 21, includes the right to grow and prosper.

“Life in the fullest sense is accomplished when life is allowed to grow and prosper, and is let to halt only where one chooses to halt. In that sense, the right to grow and prosper cannot be limited to material growth, but it extends to every aspect of life, from physical, mental, material, emotional, and spiritual well-being,” Justice Seshasayee wrote while explaining that the need to travel could be for any purpose.

He went on to state: “From holidaying to building relationship to professional engagement to pilgrimage and education, there can be endless human activities which can fall within this concept, and each of them may contribute to one’s growth and prosperity. The choice rests with the one who holds the right. How one exercises one’s right to life is not the concern of law as long as it is legitimate.”

The judge also observed: “We made the Constitution and hence, we have a duty to uphold its ideals. Any procedure which operates disproportionately to the right to grow and prosper is anathema to the constitutional aspirations and an antithesis to constitutional values. If the Constitution cannot assure what it promises, that would be our collective betrayal of the Constitution. The Constitution can never fail unless we fail it.”

Expressing reservations over the use of the expression ‘Look Out Circular’ and the shades of indignation it possesses as it is slapped on law abiders and law evaders alike, the judge said: “However, till the Executive shapes and fashions an alternative mechanism with equal efficacy, LOC may have to continue with a rider that it does not destroy the right to travel abroad and kill the right to grow and prosper perpetually.”

The judge also said that certain bad experiences of some individuals having flown out of the country to evade the process of law appeared to have created a fear psychosis among the investigating agencies and was eventually leading them to issue LOCs indiscriminately against every other individual. “But do a couple of trees define the forest?” the judge asked before cautioning them against violating the fundamental right.