The Madras High Court recently held that an adverse police report declaring an individual “foreigner” cannot nullify a statutory entitlement to Indian citizenship by birth when that citizenship is otherwise established with genuine and verified documentation. The case arose when a man born in India sought issuance of an Indian passport but was denied on the basis of a negative police verification report, which identified him as a “suspect in Sri Lankan.” The petitioner was born in 1986 in Tiruchirappalli to parents who had come to India from Sri Lanka and were residing at a rehabilitation camp.
The petitioner’s application for passport was rejected by the Regional Passport Officer after the police report raised questions about his citizenship. He then filed a writ petition before the Madras High Court, asserting that he was an Indian citizen by birth as per the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The Court verified the authenticity of his birth certificate with the competent local authority, and also noted that his date of birth matched with his school-mark sheets (SSLC and HSC), thereby confirming that he was born in India prior to the statutory cutoff date under the Act.
Under Section 3(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act, every person born in India between 25 January 1950 and 1 July 1987 is a citizen of India by birth, regardless of the nationality of his or her parents. The Court observed that since the petitioner fell within this category, his citizenship by birth was beyond dispute once the documents were verified. The Court then held that the adverse police report — labeling him as a “foreigner” on account of his parents’ origin — could not override the statutory right conferred by the Citizenship Act.
Accordingly, the Court directed the Passport Issuing Authority to process the petitioner’s application and issue the passport within eight weeks. The judgment thus reaffirmed that where statutory citizenship by birth is established through valid and genuine documents, administrative or police doubts about parentage do not carry sufficient weight to deny a citizen his passport.
The Court’s reasoning underscores that citizenship under the Act is a statutory right, not a matter of discretion or police verification. Once the essential criteria under the Act are satisfied and properly documented, ancillary adverse agency reports cannot be permitted to undermine that status.
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