Roy & Roy v. CBI: Article 21 and the proportionality limits of Look Out Circulars

The facts in brief

The petitioners, Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, are the founder-promoters of New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV). The Central Bureau of Investigation registered an FIR against them in June 2017 alleging financial irregularities arising out of share-and-loan transactions in the company. A second FIR followed in August 2019 alleging a related set of transactions. At the agency's request the Bureau of Immigration opened Look Out Circulars against both petitioners in 2019, with the consequence that they were prevented from leaving India without prior clearance.

By the time the writ petition was heard, the 2017 FIR had been closed by the CBI itself — the agency filing a closure report and the matter ceasing to be a pending investigation. The 2019 FIR remained open, but no chargesheet had been filed in the approximately six years that had elapsed since registration. The petitioners moved the Delhi High Court under Article 226 contending that the continued operation of the LOCs, in those circumstances, was no longer a reasonable restriction on their fundamental right to travel.

The CBI defended the LOCs on the standard ground that the 2019 investigation was continuing and that the petitioners' presence within Indian jurisdiction was necessary to its progress. The petitioners offered, by way of mitigation, undertakings of continuing cooperation, notification of travel plans, and timely return.

The constitutional framework

The Indian LOC regime sits on a slender statutory base — there is no parent statute; the regime is constituted by a series of Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memoranda from 2010 onwards, augmented by Bureau of Immigration operating procedures. Because the regime restricts the Article 21 right to travel and the Article 19(1)(d) right of free movement, the courts have over the last decade developed an Article 226 supervisory jurisprudence to discipline its use. The leading lines are the Bombay High Court's reasoning in Karti Chidambaram v. Bureau of Immigration, the Delhi High Court's reasoning in Vikas Chaudhary v. Union of India, and the Bombay decision in the Pahuja line — each insisting that an LOC cannot be open-ended, that it must rest on a contemporaneous investigative justification, and that its continued operation must satisfy a proportionality test.

The proportionality test in this domain weighs four factors: the gravity of the allegations underlying the LOC, the stage of the investigation (whether a chargesheet has been filed and whether trial has commenced), the duration of the LOC, and the existence of any concrete indicia of flight risk or non-cooperation. The four factors are weighed together; no single factor is dispositive, but a stagnant investigation combined with a long-running LOC and the absence of flight-risk indicia generates a strong presumption that the restriction has lost its constitutional warrant.

What the Court held

The Article 21 holding

Justice Datta accepted that the State has a legitimate interest in ensuring the petitioners' availability for investigation, but held that an LOC sustained for approximately six years without a chargesheet, in the context of a closed first FIR and an open second FIR without trial-readiness, bears no proportionate relationship to that interest. The constitutional right to travel is impaired in a continuing way every day the LOC remains open; the cumulative burden ceases to be reasonable once the underlying investigative justification has effectively dissipated.

The conditional quashing

The Court did not quash the LOCs unconditionally. The petitioners' undertakings to cooperate with the continuing 2019 investigation were accepted as a substitute for the travel-restraint, and the quashing was made operative on the filing of affidavits incorporating those undertakings. The mechanism preserves the State's investigative interest while removing the disproportionate burden on the constitutional right — the precise structure proportionality review demands.

The role of the closed FIR

The closure of the 2017 FIR by the CBI itself was a significant feature of the Court's reasoning. An LOC originally supported by two contemporaneous investigations cannot remain at its original strength when one of the two supporting investigations has been closed by the agency itself. The composite justification has weakened in a quantifiable way, and the LOC must answer for the change.

The doctrinal architecture

Proportionality in the LOC setting

The order applies the structured proportionality reasoning that has now become the operative framework in Article 21 cases — drawn from K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) and Anuradha Bhasin (2020) — to the LOC context. The four-step inquiry — legitimate State aim, suitability of the measure, necessity, and balancing — is read into Justice Datta's reasoning even where the order does not use the formal vocabulary. The legitimate aim is investigative integrity. The suitability of an LOC for that aim is undisputed at first issuance. Necessity, however, attenuates over time as the investigation either proceeds or stagnates; and the balancing prong fails where the duration of the LOC has out-stripped the investigative justification.

The trajectory of LOC jurisprudence

The order extends the Karti Chidambaram / Vikas Chaudhary / Pahuja line by holding that the closure of an underlying FIR by the agency itself is a transformative event for the LOC's continued legality. Earlier orders had addressed stagnant investigations; the Roy order addresses an investigation that the agency has, in effect, partly walked away from. The doctrinal upshot is that the State cannot retain the benefit of an LOC originally issued against a wider investigative canvas after that canvas has been narrowed by the agency's own actions.

The cooperation-undertaking mechanism

The conditional-quashing structure is itself a contribution. By tying the relief to an enforceable affidavit of cooperation, the Court constructs a regime in which the writ remedy does not extinguish the State's investigative interest but instead recasts it. The affidavit becomes the substitute for the travel-restraint, with the standard consequences of perjury and contempt available if breach occurs. The mechanism is now the standard relief in LOC writs where the underlying investigation, however stagnant, is not formally closed.

What the order does not decide

The order does not assess the merits of the 2019 FIR; the chargesheet, if and when filed, will be assessed in its own forum. The order does not decide whether the LOC regime as constituted by the MHA Office Memoranda is itself constitutionally suspect for want of a parent statute — a structural question that has been flagged by writ petitioners in other matters but not yet decided by any Supreme Court bench. And the order does not lay down a numerical threshold for "too long"; six years was held to be too long on the facts, but the order does not commit the Court to a six-year per-se rule.

The order also does not decide what happens if the CBI later seeks to revive the LOC on production of new material. The general position emerging from the Delhi and Bombay lines is that fresh material can support a fresh LOC, but the agency must demonstrate that the new material genuinely revives the investigative justification rather than merely re-instating the prior status quo.

After the judgment

There has been no reported challenge to the order at the Supreme Court level as of the date of this brief. The 2019 FIR investigation continues. The order's broader effect is to discipline the LOC regime at the Delhi High Court — placing the agency on notice that LOCs sustained for half a decade or more without a chargesheet, especially where partly supported by closed FIRs, will struggle to survive Article 226 scrutiny.

For the practising bar the order supplies a clear template: a writ petition challenging an LOC must marshall the duration of the LOC, the stage of the underlying investigation, the absence of fresh material, and an undertaking of continuing cooperation. The conditional-quashing mechanism then becomes the natural form of relief, balancing constitutional protection against State interest in an architecture that has now stabilised across two metropolitan High Courts.

Related on Valkya

• Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India: internet as an Article 19 right
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India: the nine-judge privacy declaration
• Foundation for Media Professionals: 4G restoration and the proportionality committee

Sources

1. Bar and Bench — "Delhi High Court quashes Look Out Circular against NDTV founders Prannoy Roy, Radhika Roy": https://www.barandbench.com/news/delhi-high-court-quashes-loc-against-prannoy-roy-radhika-roy-ndtv-founders
2. The Tribune — "Delhi HC quashes look-out circular against NDTV founders Prannoy, Radhika Roy": https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/delhi-hc-quashes-look-out-circular-against-ndtv-founders-prannoy-radhika-roy
3. Deccan Herald — "Delhi high court quashes look out circular against NDTV founders Prannoy Radhika Roy": https://www.deccanherald.com/india/delhi-high-court-quashes-look-out-circular-against-ndtv-founders-prannoy-radhika-roy
4. LiveLaw — Delhi HC LOC quashing coverage, 20 March 2026: https://www.livelaw.in/high-court/delhi-high-court/delhi-hc-quashes-loc-prannoy-radhika-roy-ndtv-founders-cbi