Imran Khan is an actor who holds US citizenship. In India, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office handles the registration and oversight of foreign nationals, and a ‘Leave India’ notice is the administrative directive that tells a foreigner to exit the country. Khan says he received such a notice from the FRRO after he was briefly detained during protests. The notice directs him to leave India, and he is now challenging it in court rather than complying.
The case sits at the intersection of immigration administration and criminal procedure. A Leave India notice is not a criminal conviction; it is an executive action taken on grounds of registration, security or conduct. For a foreign national, it can effectively end the ability to stay, work and travel freely in the country. That is why Khan has moved the Bombay High Court, the high court for the state of Maharashtra.
The Bombay High Court has scheduled a hearing of Khan’s plea for October 26, 2026. The court’s listing is the first formal judicial checkpoint in the dispute. At this stage the court is not deciding the merits; it is framing the parties and the issues that will be examined.
The court has also directed Khan to add the Maharashtra government as a respondent.
The court has taken a procedural step that widens the record. It has asked for the State of Maharashtra to be made a party to the case to check for any criminal antecedents. In practice that means the state government, which houses the police and prosecution machinery, will be required to place on record whether there are any criminal cases or adverse records linked to Khan. The court has also directed Khan to add the Maharashtra government as a respondent.
Khan’s lawyer has put two factual assertions before the court. The lawyer argues that Khan has no criminal antecedents and that he was not at the protest in which he was briefly detained. Those points go to the basis on which the FRRO notice was issued and whether the detention that preceded it was properly linked to him.
Khan’s legal team frames the notice as a procedural failure. The team claims the notice was issued without a proper hearing and due to political pressure. The allegation is that authorities acted under pressure from public social media campaigns by political functionaries rather than an independent application of mind.
In administrative law, a hearing is the safeguard that allows a person to know the case against them and respond before an adverse order is made. An allegation of pressure from public campaigns shifts the question from what Khan did to how the decision was made. The court will have to consider whether the FRRO followed the required process and whether the state can substantiate any grounds for expulsion.
With the Maharashtra government now a respondent, the hearing on October 26 will test both the factual record about Khan’s presence at the protest and his criminal history, and the procedural record about how the Leave India notice was issued. For now the matter is pending before the Bombay High Court, with the state asked to respond and the actor seeking to set aside the directive to leave the country.