Madras HC poser on deportation of refugee’s son born in India

A division bench comprising Justice N Kirubakaran and Justice Abdul Quddhose before whom a habeas corpus plea came up directed the said officer S Xavier Dhanaraj to appear in person and file an affidavit on the inconsistencies in the submissions made by both the concerned State and Central government authorities regards deporting the youth to Sri Lanka.

As per the case, K Sundar Lingam and his family came to India in 1987 due to the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka and his son S Anand was born at Thirumala Devasam College and Hospital, Alappuzha district, Kerala on December 25, 1992. Thereafter, he studied at Alpha Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Redhills, Chennai. Both were established through birth certificate and transfer certificate.

Subsequently, he went to Australia in 2013 and returned to Chennai on October 27, 2018. On his return, the authorities had detained him. Based on this, his parents moved the high court through an habeas corpus seeking to produce him in body.

However, the registration officer had submitted that Anand had travelled to Australia illegally by boat and had sought asylum there. But, with his application being rejected he went Indian Embassy and fraudulently obtained Indian Emergency certificate from Melbourne Indian Embassy on September 21, 2018 claiming that he is an Indian National.

On his arrival from Australia on September 27, 2018, the authorities on scrutiny of documents found that he was born to Sri Lankan parents and on rejection of asylum by the Australian Government he had come to India illegally and hence was deported to Sri Lanka, the Government submission said.

But the bench on wondering as to if the petitioner’s son had fraudulently obtained Indian emergency certificate from Melbourne and travelled to India, the usual course should be to send him back to Australia and not to Sri Lanka, said, “The petitioner’s son was born and brought up inIndia and he has got no connection at all with Sri Lanka. It is not known as to how the authorities had deported the petitioner’s son to Sri Lanka.”

Further, it is also not the case of the authorities that the Australian Government had deported the petitioner’s son to India after rejecting his asylum application, the bench added.