StatesKarnataka
Karnataka High Court gives state three months to set up district panels on illegal immigration
Justice M Nagaprasanna quashed two cases filed against a Bengaluru doctor by suspected Bangladeshi nationals he had reported, calling them retaliatory.
Key points
- The court ordered district committees under the MHA's SOP to work within three months.
- It quashed two cases against Dr T Nagendrappa as retaliatory.
- Police cannot refuse a complaint just because the complainant is a foreign national, it said.
The Karnataka High Court has given the state government three months to set up working district-level committees to deal with suspected illegal immigrants, warning that “indifference today may become an institutional vulnerability tomorrow”.
Justice M Nagaprasanna made the order on 16 October on a petition by T Nagendrappa, a Bengaluru doctor, and it was published this week. Illegal immigration, the judge said, “must be addressed with firmness”.
The committees are part of a standard operating procedure the Union Home Ministry issued on 2 May 2025. It asks states and Union Territories to set up district-level special task forces and holding centres for people awaiting deportation, and to verify within 30 days the claims of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant who says they are Indian or live elsewhere in the country. The court said Karnataka had not shown whether such committees existed or were working, and asked for a district-wise compliance report with details of how they are made up and how they function.
The doctor’s case
On 18 July, Nagendrappa alerted the authorities to people he suspected were undocumented Bangladeshi nationals living in labour sheds behind a government school in Kodathi village, off Sarjapur Main Road. Two of them, Mohammed Saidul Islam and Nasreena, then filed complaints against him, alleging assault, wrongful restraint and criminal intimidation.
The court noted that at 11:30 am on 22 July an investigating officer recommended that Nasreena be sent to a detention centre, and that her complaint was filed at 11:45 am. “The proximity of these events is too conspicuous to be brushed aside as a mere coincidence,” the judge said, and quashed both cases as retaliatory.
He also made clear that police cannot refuse to register a complaint about a cognisable offence merely because the person making it is a foreign national or is suspected of staying in India unlawfully.