Actor Imran Khan challenges 'leave India' notice in Bombay High Court; hearing on Tuesday, deadline 28 October

Separately, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office has given him a show-cause notice that asks why his Overseas Citizen of India status should not be cancelled.

The law behind the notice

The authorities have invoked Sections 7(2)(C) and 29 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act. Section 7(2)(C) lets the government restrict the presence of a foreigner in India. Section 29 allows removal of a foreigner for violating the Act or related rules, or after an adverse security report. If Khan does not leave by 28 October, deportation proceedings under Section 29 can begin.

Khan's petition, filed through advocate Zulfikar Memon, calls the notice illegal, arbitrary, perverse and drastic. He says that he did not take part in any gathering and had no link to the organisers of the protest. He argues that the notice shows a lack of application of mind and the arbitrary targeting of a public figure, and that he was not given a hearing before it was issued. He asks the court to quash the notice, to stay its operation while the case is pending and to stop the authorities from taking coercive steps.

The bench that heard the matter on Monday consisted of Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait Sethna. Senior advocate Venkatesh Dhond appeared for Khan, and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Union government. The reports do not say what the state's response will be on the merits, and the court has not commented on the substance. The Solicitor General's appearance shows that the Union government is treating the matter as one of its own and not as a local police action.

The case sits where politics, immigration law and the rules for Overseas Citizens meet. OCI cardholders are foreign nationals who have a lifelong right to live and work in India, but they are not citizens, and the law lets the government cancel the status for certain reasons, among them violations of Indian law. Whether taking part in a political protest, if that is established, is a reason for removal is the central legal question, and the court will also have to say whether he was owed a hearing before the notice was issued.

Khan says he was not part of the protest. The authorities say, in effect, that his presence at a protest against the head of a constitutional body was a matter that called for action. The police have not published the material on which the decision rests, and the court may ask to see it.

The first date is Tuesday's hearing. The court can grant an interim stay on the notice, which would hold off the 28 October deadline, or it can refuse and leave Khan to decide whether to leave or to take the matter further. The second is the show-cause notice on his OCI status, which can lead to a separate process even if the exit notice is stayed. A third is the reaction of the film industry and the protesters to the outcome.

For Khan, the case has put his name back in the news in a way that he did not ask for.