Seesa Santosh v. State of Telangana (2026): the right to travel abroad bows to the complainant's right to a speedy trial

The appeal in Seesa Santosh v. State of Telangana turned on a deceptively simple question: when an accused person facing trial asks the court for permission to fly abroad for medical care, on what terms should that permission be given — and against what should it be weighed? A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Dipankar Datta, J. and Satish Chandra Sharma, J., answered that the accused's liberty to travel does not stand alone. It sits opposite the complainant's right to a speedy trial, and where the two collide, the court must strike a balance rather than treat the accused's freedom of movement as a trump card. On the facts, that balance tipped against the foreign trip, and the High Court's order permitting it was set aside.

The facts in brief

The proceedings had their origin in October 2014, when the appellant, Seesa Santosh, lodged a complaint concerning the suspicious unnatural death of her father. A First Information Report was registered, and a chargesheet was filed in February 2016. The accused — respondent no. 2, a citizen of the United States — was arraigned for offences under Sections 120-B and 306 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code: criminal conspiracy and abetment of suicide, read with the provision on acts done by several persons in furtherance of a common intention.

The procedural history that followed is what gave the case its shape. A Look Out Circular issued against the accused was suspended, and he travelled abroad in 2017. He returned to India only in April 2025, when he was arrested. He then applied for the return of his passport and for permission to travel to the United States for medical treatment, relying on his having suffered two brain strokes in 2023. The Magistrate, by an order of 7 May 2025, allowed him to retain his passport but restrained him from travelling abroad without the express permission of the Sessions Court once the case stood committed. The High Court of Telangana took a more indulgent view: it permitted the accused to travel to the USA after committal, subject to conditions, citing his medical needs and the fact that he had appeared before the courts on a number of occasions. The complainant carried the matter to the Supreme Court.

The question

Stripped to its core, the appeal asked the Court to locate the right to travel abroad within the constitutional scheme and then to decide what that placement entails when an accused invokes it during a pending criminal trial. The right to travel abroad has long been understood as an aspect of the personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21. But Article 21 is not a one-sided guarantee that benefits only the person seeking to move freely. The complainant in a criminal case has her own Article 21 interest — the right to a speedy trial — and the State and society at large have an interest in seeing criminal justice administered effectively rather than indefinitely stalled.

The question, then, was one of balance. Could the accused's medical justification for foreign travel override the complainant's right to a timely trial, especially where the medical facilities he sought were available within India? Or did the discipline of a pending prosecution require that his freedom of movement yield, so that he remained within the jurisdiction and amenable to the trial process?

What the Court held

The Court allowed the appeal. It set aside the High Court's order permitting the accused to travel to the United States and restored the Magistrate's order of 7 May 2025 — the accused retaining his passport but barred from leaving the country without the express permission of the Sessions Court after committal.

The reasoning began from the premise that no constitutional right is unqualified. The right to travel abroad, though an incident of the personal liberty protected by Article 21, is not absolute and is amenable to reasonable restriction. Set against it is another facet of the same Article: the complainant's right to a speedy trial. The Court framed the exercise as one of reconciliation between these competing claims:

Applying that balance, the Court found the High Court to have been unduly indulgent. The decisive consideration was that comparable medical facilities were available in India, so that the accused's health could be addressed without his leaving the jurisdiction and prolonging a prosecution that had already been pending for years. The medical justification, in other words, did not carry the weight the High Court had given it, because the underlying need — treatment — could be met at home. With that justification weakened, the competing interest in a speedy trial and in keeping the accused within reach of the trial court prevailed.

Analysis

The judgment is a useful illustration of how Article 21 operates on both sides of a criminal case. It is tempting to read the right to travel abroad as a purely individual entitlement of the person who wishes to move — and, historically, the recognition of foreign travel as part of personal liberty was indeed a vindication of individual freedom against State restriction. But Seesa Santosh reminds us that, in the setting of a pending prosecution, the same Article houses the complainant's interest in a trial that actually proceeds. The Court did not pit a constitutional right against a mere administrative convenience; it pitted one facet of Article 21 against another, and resolved the tension by balancing rather than by ranking one as categorically superior.

The structure of the reasoning matters for practitioners. The Court did not lay down a flat rule that an accused may never travel abroad. What it did was identify the factors that govern the discretion: the gravity and stage of the proceedings, the accused's past conduct (here, a suspended Look Out Circular followed by years abroad and a late return), the strength of the medical or other justification advanced, and — critically — whether that justification can be satisfied without foreign travel. The availability of comparable treatment in India was not a peripheral observation; it was the fact that drained the accused's case of its force. Where the asserted need can be met within the jurisdiction, the argument for permitting departure correspondingly weakens.

There is also a quiet message about appellate deference and the calibration of trial-court conditions. The Magistrate had crafted a measured order — passport retained, but no foreign travel without express Sessions Court permission post-committal — that preserved the accused's documents while keeping him tethered to the trial. The High Court loosened that tether; the Supreme Court re-tightened it. The restored order is itself a model of proportionality: it does not confiscate the passport or impose a blanket ban, but conditions any departure on judicial leave from the court seized of the trial. That is the sort of tailored condition the balancing exercise is meant to produce.

Why it matters

For anyone advising an accused who wishes to travel abroad while a prosecution is pending — for medical treatment, business, or family reasons — Seesa Santosh sets the analytical frame. The application will not be decided by the strength of the personal need in the abstract. It will be decided by weighing that need against the complainant's right to a speedy trial and the public interest in effective criminal justice, and by asking whether the need can be met without leaving India. A medical justification, in particular, will be scrutinised for whether equivalent care is domestically available; if it is, the case for foreign travel is materially weaker.

The decision also reinforces a broader theme in Article 21 jurisprudence: the same provision that protects the liberty of the accused protects the dignity and procedural interests of the victim or complainant. Courts asked to relax conditions on an accused's movement must keep both in view. And the restored Magistrate's order offers a template — passport retention coupled with a requirement of express judicial permission to travel — for conditions that respect liberty without surrendering the integrity of the trial.

Related on Valkya

• Roy and Roy v. CBI: look-out circular quashed under Article 21
• Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana: grounds of arrest under Article 22

Sources

• Verdictum, "Right To Travel Abroad Not Absolute: Supreme Court Sets Aside Order Allowing Accused To Travel To USA"
• LiveLaw, "Seesa Santosh v. The State of Telangana and Anr." — 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 603
• Verdictum, "Weekly Overview — Supreme Court Judgments: June 01 – June 05, 2026"