Priya Pillai, Campaigner Greenpeace India.
New Delhi: Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai, who was “offloaded” from a flight at the Delhi airport on instructions of Intelligence Bureau, approached the Delhi high court on Tuesday.
Terming the January 11 move by immigration officials as violation of her basic rights, Pillai has also challenged the home ministry guidelines that allow agencies to deboard citizens without court summons.
She was on her way to London to make a presentation before British MPs regarding alleged human rights violation at Mahan in Madhya Pradesh where a proposed coal mining project was threatening to uproot the lives of the local communities.
Greenpeace in a statement said that the activist has claimed that her being denied permission to travel abroad by government agencies was illegal and a violation of her basic right to personal liberty and freedom of speech. It is also “deliberate attempt to malign her reputation”, the organization has claimed.
Pillai’s petition argues that debarring her from going abroad is an illegal act by overzealous government agencies on the basis of a flawed circular issued by MHA. “The circular has no legal basis as Pillai neither has any conviction against her, nor has she ever evaded arrest or trial in any case,” it says.
In 2014, the MHA had decided to block foreign funds received by Greenpeace India which the NGO had received from Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation. The NGO had then challenged the government’s action in the Delhi high court, which last week ruled that the funds must be released. HC directed the MHA to transfer the blocked the funds to Greenpeace India’s account calling the ministry’s action, arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional.
(TNN)
