Look Out Circulars deprive a person of his liberty: Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court today sought to know the genesis of Look Out Circular (LOC), saying it deprives a person of his liberty and violates the fundamental right.

"Assist me on the genesis of LOC. Because by issuing an LOC, you deprive a person of his liberty which is a violation of a fundamental right," Justice Rajiv Shakdher orally said.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Mehmood Pracha, an advocate, seeking quashing of an LOC issued against him by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to prevent him from travelling to Iraq in 2014 to carry out relief work and imposition of a Rs 10 crore penalty on the agency for its action.

The court asked the government's counsel to do more research on LOC and said if LOC has to be issued for an emergency situation, a law has to be there for it.

Central government counsel Manik Dogra said as there was no restriction on the overseas travel of Pracha, nothing remains in the matter.

Pracha said he suffered for four years for no reason and sought that the LOC against him be quashed.

The petitioner also challenged the Home Ministry's 2010 office memorandum on issuing Look-Out Circulars on the ground that it "does not flow from any enacted law".

According to the petition, Pracha came to know about the LOC only when he and five other delegates were on their way to Iraq on November 24, 2014, but were stopped from boarding their flight and an endorsement 'offloaded' was made on their passports.

The six were detained for several hours at the airport and the airport police station and their passports were impounded, the petition read.

Their passports were later suspended - an order that was eventually withdrawn on February 17, 2015, it said.

They had intended to travel to Iraq to discuss the proposed humanitarian mission, for which they had received support of many volunteers, the petitioner claimed.