On Wednesday, Aakar Patel (51), the former chair of Amnesty International in India took to Twitter and said that he was prevented from travelling to the US by immigration authorities at the Bengaluru International Airport based on a look-out circular issued by the CBI in connection with a case against Amnesty India in 2019.
stopped from leaving india at Bangalore airport. am on the exit control list. Got passport back through court order specifically for this trip to the US
— Aakar Patel (@Aakar__Patel) April 6, 2022
“When I went to the airport this morning, the immigration said that I am on the Look Out Circular (LOC) from the CBI. This was something that I did not know. I have presented myself to the CBI whenever they have called me. I don’t know why should they have a look-out circular for someone they know about,” Patel was quoted as saying by Indian Express.
“I found out that I was on the lookout list only when I went to the airport. It happened after check-in, at immigration. We put our bags in and had to go through immigration,” he said, as per the report.
Pertinently, Patel had recovered his passport, recently, from a Surat court in connection with a case filed by a BJP legislator and was set to travel to the US on Wednesday morning at the invitation of a few universities to deliver lectures.
In February, a trial court in Surat had ordered the release of Patel’s passport for the period between March 1 – May 30 to facilitate his travel to the US. The passport was released on payment of a deposit amount of Rs 2 lakh and other conditions like the details of travel, contact numbers, and places of visit in the US.
“I was supposed to go and speak to some universities in the US—Berkeley and New York University—and my passport had been impounded in a case that one BJP MLA had filed against me in Surat. As part of the condition of bail I had to surrender my passport,” said Aakar Patel.