United Kingdom-based anthropologist Filippo Osella on Monday approached the Delhi High Court challenging his deportation from the Thiruvananthapuram International airport in March, saying he was treated like “a hardened criminal” by the authorities in India, Live Law reported.
Osella, recognised for his work on societies in South Asia, arrived in the Kerala capital from the UK on March 24 to attend a research conference. He was to be the keynote speaker at a conference on “emerging themes connected to the livelihood and lifeworld of Kerala’s coastal communities”.
In his petition, Osella said that his deportation was unconstitutional and arbitrary as the authorities have not given him any reason to date on why he was denied entry to India.
“Reasons were disturbingly absent in this high-handed and arbitrary conduct of the immigration authorities at Thiruvananthapuram airport,” the plea said. “By 4.30 am, the professor was literally marched back and bundled into the same aircraft, in which he had arrived and was unjustly deported – much like a hardened criminal.”
The plea added, “The petitioner’s request for his blood pressure medications from his luggage was also not allowed creating extreme anxiety, hypertension and panic.”
Osella, who is a professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, sought a direction from the government to present the records that led to his deportation and to quash the same.
The Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Bureau of Immigration and the Foreign Regional Registration Officer, Thiruvananthapuram, have been made respondents in the case.
His plea contended that the authorities never gave him a chance to present his side and that “the whole process was vitiated by duress and actuated by arbitrariness”.
Osella, the petition said, has never faced any immigration problems during his previous visits to India and he has never been involved in any illegal activities.
On Monday, Justice Yashwant Varma sought the Central government’s stand on the anthropologist’s plea. The matter will be heard next on October 12.
Osella’s deportation had sparked outrage in academic circles as he has been carrying out extensive research in Kerala since the 1990s.
In July, Lindsay Bremner, an architecture professor from the University of Westminster, also said that she was denied entry into India and was deported to London despite having a valid visa and passport.
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