The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the deportation of an Accenture employee from Bengaluru and his family as ordered by the government.
The government is cancelling visas and sending back Pakistan nationals as part of a series of diplomatic restrictions after the Pahalgam terror attack.
Ahmed Tariq Butt had approached the court claiming that six members of his family and he had been ordered to leave the country despite holding Indian passports and an Aadhaar card.
The Apex Court directed verification of the documents and instructed that no coercive action be taken against him till then. The appellant has studied at IIM Kozhikode.
He was asked to approach the high court for further relief.
Representing the government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta contested the order, but the Supreme Court acknowledged “some human element” in this matter.
Albeit, the Supreme Court also said that its orders in this case could not be used as precedent in others, a significant statement given the number of reports about Indian nationals – many with Muslim names – being asked to leave the country after visas were cancelled.
During the hearing, Justice Surya Kant wanted to know how Butt came to India. Butt said he came to India in 1997 with his father, who held a Pakistan passport.
On arriving in Srinagar, Butt said, he surrendered his Pak passport to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, after which he applied for and secured an Indian passport.
Other members of his family, he said, arrived in Srinagar three years later. He informed the court that they also secured Indian citizenship and passport.
He said his siblings and he were educated in a private school in the city.
Butt claimed that the notice falsely said they had entered India on visas and had overstayed.
The government has scrapped all visas for Pak nationals, excluding long-term stays and those given to Pak Hindus, in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, in which four terrorists from the banned Pak-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group slaughtered 26 civilians, mostly tourists and including a Nepali.
The government has vowed vengeance for the worst terror attack in India since Pulwama 2019, in which 40 soldiers were killed by another banned Pak-based terrorist group, the Jaish-e-Mohammed.
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