A Goa-born Christian man from Pakistan approached the Supreme Court seeking Indian citizenship under the CAA. The Court refused to entertain the plea, saying, “He must approach the Bombay High Court for any relief.”
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Jude Mendes, a Goa-born Pakistani Catholic man seeking citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) due to religious persecution in Pakistan.
The court advised him to seek relief from the Bombay High Court instead.
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Mendes, a chef at a restaurant in Goa, arrived in India six years after the CAA’s cut-off date of January 1, 2014. Born in Goa to a Pakistani national in 1987, he moved shortly thereafter and completed his education in Karachi.
He entered India in 2016 on a long-term visa, which is currently extended until June 20.
In 2020, he obtained his Aadhaar card and married an Indian woman in February.
Following the Pahalgam terror attack on tourists by Pakistan-backed terrorists, India canceled all visas issued to Pakistani nationals on April 25.
However, Mendes’s long-term visa remains valid.
Advocate Raghav Awasthi informed the bench, which included Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan, that “the petitioner is born in India and is a Roman Catholic, who is highly persecuted in Pakistan due to being a minority community.”
Awasthi argued that Mendes cannot return to Pakistan to renew his expiring passport due to the threat to his life, and thus should be granted an extension of his long-term visa.
The petitioner expressed concerns that his Indian birth and marriage to an Indian citizen could jeopardize his safety because of severe religious persecution in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the bench stated that he must approach the Bombay High Court for any relief.
Under the CAA, India has committed to granting citizenship to individuals from minority communities facing persecution based on religion in neighbouring countries, provided they entered India before January 1, 2014.