No passport surrender for bail: HC

CHANDIGARH: Criminal courts cannot order the impounding of passports as a condition for granting bail, the Punjab and Haryana high court has held on Thursday. A bench of justice Daya Chaudhary said t he authority to impound passports lies solely with the passport authority under Section 10 (3) of the Passports Act, 1967.

The court was hearing a petition of Anila Bhatia, a senior pilot with Air India and a Gurugram resident, who was booked by the local police in a cheating and misappropriation case in August 2017. A trial court granted her bail this September, with a condition that she would surrender her passport and would not leave the country without informing the court. The petitioner had pleaded that it was difficult for her to approach the court each and every day to seek prior permission as she gets a break of only two-three days before flying abroad.

“No doubt, Section 104 of Criminal Procedure Code (CRPC) states that the court may, if it thinks fit, impound any document or thing produced before it but this provision will only enable the court to impound any document or thing other than a passport as impounding a ‘passport’ is provided for in Section 10(3) of the Passports Act,” justice Chaudhary said, adding that a special law prevails over the general law.

The Passports Act is a special law while the CRPC is a general law. Hence, the impounding of a passport cannot be done by the court.