The Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) should set its house in order and forthwith stop being quixotic in granting extension of medical visa or medical attendant visa to foreigners, said the High Court of Karnataka on noticing that the visa of a Yemen national was extended multiple times without verifying medical records.
The court also directed that the FRRO should enquire into communications issued by hospitals recommending medical visa, medical attendant visa, or extension of these visas and to ensure that the hospitals are not hand in glove with the foreign citizens.
However, the court made it clear that care should be taken that genuine cases do not suffer in the process of verification of medical records.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while rejecting a petition by 49-year-old Mohammed Noman Ahmed Almeri, residing in Bengaluru. The petitioner had questioned the rejection of his application for visa extension.
Background of case
The petitioner came to India in 2013 on a student visa, valid till August 2014, to pursue a three-year MSc Nursing course in a private college in Bengaluru. However, he could not complete the course owing to the language barrier and “deteriorating health condition.”
He returned to Yemen in May 2016, but came back to India in October 2016 on a medical attendant visa, valid till March 2017. He got his visa converted into a medical visa for the purpose of undergoing special medical treatment for his common ailments of hypertension, borderline diabetes, and fatty liver.
He got his medical visa extended multiple times, in the guise of a need for surgery-based medical certificates issued by a private hospital situated on J.C. Road in the city. His last extended visa expired this June 6.
“If these documents could become a matter for conversion from medical attendant visa to medical visa, it shows that the authorities have converted it without even looking into the documents. It is further surprising as to how and on what parameters the medical visa was granted to the petitioner. It is rather shocking how FRRO converted his visa to medical visa without looking into the documents or his ailments,” the court observed.
It was at the third extension of his visa during 2021, the court noted, that he had revealed that he married an Indian national in 2019, and on that basis applied for a grant of Indian citizenship but it was not considered by the authorities.
Working as agent
The court, from the information secured by the Ministry of Home Affairs before rejecting his recent application for extension, has noted that the petitioner had not undergone any surgery, but in the garb of undergoing medical treatment, was working as an agent to bring Yemen nationals to India.
He was depicting them as patients and medical attendants based on certificates issued by the hospital on J.C. Road, and those foreign nationals were employed in different places in India.
Also, the court noted that he had already married in Yemen and had three daughters, and brought them also to India on a study visa, which the authorities had recently declined to extend, and that a criminal case for securing visa though fraud was registered against him recently.
