NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court has cautioned the Centre against religious profiling of persons while asking it to again examine the visa request of an Indian-origin man , Mohd Abdul Moyeed , who migrated to Canada but was not allowed to visit his wife and ailing child in India.

Moyeed had moved court invoking violation of his rights to visit members of his family, which includes his ailing and differently abled son and aged mother-in-law, in India.

He said in 2015 that when he landed in Hyderabad he was immediately confined by immigration authorities and later deported to Canada without an explanation.

“Every violation of visa norm cannot possibly lead to banning a person from entering into the country unless there is material to show that the person concerned acted in a manner which was inimical to our national interest,” Justice Rajiv Shakdher noted. “It is to be borne in mind that profiling a person solely on the basis of the religion he or she practices is contrary to our constitutional creed,” he added.

The HC’s observations came when it found that Moyeed was blacklisted by the government solely because he visited mosques and interacted with local Muslim people in Mewat district of Haryana, to propagate ‘Tabligh-e-Jamaat’ ideology on one of his visits to India.

The Centre claimed since the petitioner had entered India on a tourist visa, he could not have undertaken the said activity.

But the court found that Indian immigration authorities, while blacklisting Moyeed, failed to give him a chance to explain his stand and have “wronged the petitioner”. It directed the government to reconsider the decision to include his name in the blacklist by affording him an opportunity to explain himself and if needed give him “a personal hearing”.

It further directed that while deciding if he deserves to be allowed to enter India or remain in the blacklist, the government must “also take into account his family status, his status in the Canadian society, his track record of having claimed no involvement whatsoever in any criminal activity and his general reputation amongst the members of his community who reside in India.”

