Lucknow:
The Allahabad High Court has ruled that an accused who has been granted bail does not have an inherent right to seek permission to travel abroad for attending a relative’s wedding and a leisure trip.
The Lucknow bench of the court said a relative’s wedding overseas and a pleasure trip to another country are not considered essential reasons for an undertrial accused to travel internationally.
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi delivered the verdict while dismissing a plea filed by Aditya Murti, a consultant at the Shri Ram Murti Smarak Institute of Medical Sciences, Bareilly. Murti had sought permission to travel to the United States for his relative’s wedding and subsequently, to France for a related celebration from May 3 to 22.
“An accused person who has been enlarged on bail can be granted permission to travel abroad for some pressing necessity like medical treatment, attending essential official duties and the like,” the bench clarified, adding that attending a relative’s wedding does not constitute a pressing necessity.
Furthermore, the court addressed the petitioner’s argument that he was previously granted permission for foreign travel for non-essential purposes. “Merely because the trial court had earlier granted permission to the applicant to travel abroad for non-essential objects on numerous occasions, he does not get a right to travel abroad for non-essential objects this time also, when the trial has reached the stage of defence evidence,” it said.
Murti had challenged a special CBI court’s April 24 order that rejected his application for the foreign trip. Murti has been facing trial in a CBI case for more than a decade and even the Supreme Court had directed the trial court to expedite the proceedings, which are currently at the defence-evidence stage.
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