The challenge before the court The case places a dispute between an actor and Indian immigration authorities before the country’s Bombay High Court. The challenged document was issued by the Mumbai FRRO, an office that The Times of India identifies as operating under the Bureau of Immigration. Four supplied reports agree on the central development: Khan filed a petition against a direction requiring him to leave India. The petition was filed on October 17, 2026, and the departure deadline specified in the notice was October 28. The available material describes the filing and the notice, but does not provide a case number, a judicial order, or a final finding on whether the FRRO action was lawful.
What Khan is contesting Khan’s petition presents the leave-India notice as an extraordinary and legally defective measure. According to reporting by The Times of India, The Hindu and Hindustan Times, his filing describes the notice in terms including arbitrary, unreasonable, illegal, perverse and drastic. Those descriptions are allegations and legal arguments made by Khan, not findings by the Bombay High Court. His petition also alleges that the action violates constitutional protections under Articles 14 and 21, which concern equality and the right to life and personal liberty. The supplied reports do not independently establish that the notice breached those protections. They establish instead that the constitutional argument is a central part of Khan’s challenge to the FRRO decision.
Residence and immigration status The petition’s personal and legal context rests partly on Khan’s stated relationship with India. The supplied reports identify him as a U.S. citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India cardholder. The petition says he has lived in India since he was two years old. The Hindu’s account further reports that the filing referred to deep family, marital, educational and professional ties to the country, while also describing Khan as having no criminal antecedents. The fact lock confirms the citizenship, OCI status and residence assertion, but the broader description of those ties comes from the supplied source account of the petition. Khan’s challenge therefore presents the departure direction as affecting a person who says his connection to India dates back to early childhood, while his formal status is described as that of a foreign citizen holding an OCI card.
The protest cited in the reports The supplied reporting links the immigration action to Khan’s attendance at a protest in Mumbai concerning the Chief Election Commissioner. The Times of India says the FRRO issued the departure notice after the protest, while The Hindu reports that Khan was detained afterward. The sources differ in how they present the detention: The Hindu reports it as an event, whereas The Times of India’s account frames related detention concerns through the claims made in the petition. The fact lock confirms the connection between the protest and the immigration action, as well as The Hindu’s report of the detention. It does not establish that attendance at the protest legally caused the notice, nor does it provide an independent finding about the conduct of the police or the authorities involved.
The Times of India’s supplied excerpt gives additional chronology from the petition’s account. It says the FRRO issued the original departure notice after the Mumbai protest and that the document gave Khan two weeks to leave. The same report says the petition maintained that Khan had no association, affiliation or connection with an organisation involved in organising or participating in the protest. The Hindu’s account similarly reports Khan’s position that he had not breached provisions of the Immigration and Foreigners Act or the Citizenship Act. These are statements attributed to the petition, rather than conclusions established by the court or by an adjudicated immigration process. The supplied material does not include the full text of the notice or the authorities’ response to these assertions.
A second notice and the OCI question The reports also describe a separate or fresh notice from the FRRO, but they differ in how specifically they characterize it. The Hindu reports that the notice asked Khan to explain why his OCI card should not be cancelled and gave him 15 days to respond. The Times of India describes the document more generally as a show-cause notice concerning possible action under laws governing foreigners and Overseas Citizens of India. The distinction matters because the supplied material does not resolve whether formal OCI-card cancellation was the precise legal objective of the second notice or whether it sought a broader response under the applicable framework. The Hindu’s account is therefore retained here as a single-source report, rather than presented as an independently settled description of the notice.
Khan’s due-process allegations Khan alleges that the action followed a politically motivated complaint and that the FRRO notice did not give him adequate reasons, supporting material or a meaningful opportunity to respond. According to the reporting based on his petition, he argued that the notice failed to identify a specific statutory breach and was issued without an inquiry, a prior show-cause process or an opportunity to answer the alleged violations. The petition also characterizes the action as disproportionate and says it improperly targeted him as a public figure. These claims remain attributed to Khan. The supplied sources do not independently establish that the complaint was politically motivated, that the notice lacked a lawful basis, or that the authorities acted for the reasons alleged in the petition.
The legal dispute consequently turns on questions that the supplied reports leave open. The exact wording and legal basis of the FRRO notices are not provided in the locked material. It is also not established whether the fresh notice formally sought cancellation of Khan’s OCI card or used a broader show-cause process related to foreign nationals and OCI holders. Similarly, the reports do not supply the government’s substantive answer to Khan’s allegations. The available evidence supports reporting that Khan has challenged the departure direction and that he disputes its reasoning and procedure; it does not support declaring the notice invalid, confirming a political motive or determining that his constitutional claims will succeed.