The Supreme Court stressed that the fundamental right to travel abroad cannot be viewed in isolation and must be balanced with the equally important right of victims and their families to a speedy trial.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma set aside the October 2025 order of the Telangana High Court allowing businessman Guniganthi Ravinder Rao to travel to the US for medical treatment, holding that the courts below had been unjustifiably lenient on the facts of the case.
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“The right to speedy trial is also a fundamental aspect of Article 21,” the bench said in its June 4 ruling, while barring the NRI businessman accused in a decade-old criminal case from leaving the country without court permission.
“The truth cannot be viewed in isolation.”
The court stressed that although the Constitution guarantees personal freedom, including the right to travel abroad, “this right cannot be viewed in isolation.”
The court said that a balance must be struck between the freedom of the accused, the victim’s right to a speedy trial and the larger societal interest in ensuring the effective administration of criminal justice.
The court added that there is no absolute fundamental right and that reasonable restrictions may be imposed when the interest of society and the judicial system so requires. Drawing on previous precedent, it reiterated that courts must balance individual liberty and societal interests when considering such requests.
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The ruling reinforces the Supreme Court’s increasing emphasis on the rights of victims within the criminal justice process, making clear that the constitutional guarantee of personal liberty cannot be invoked in a way that undermines the equally protected right of victims and their families to see criminal proceedings concluded within a reasonable time.
This case arises from a complaint filed in October 2014 regarding the suspicious death of the complainant’s father.
After investigation, the police registered an FIR charging Rao and others with criminal conspiracy and abetment to suicide under the Indian Penal Code. The indictment was filed in February 2016.
According to the ruling, the trial did not begin until nearly ten years later.
The judges noted that the defendants’ behavior throughout the proceedings and the prolonged stalemate in the trial had hampered their granting of unrestricted travel permission.
