The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a petition seeking the transportation to India of the mortal remains of Sufi saint Hazrat Shah Muhammad Abdul Muqtadir Shah Masood Ahmad, a Pakistani, who died in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2022 and was buried there.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice J B Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra said, “He is a Pakistani citizen, how can you expect the Union of India to bring his burials in India?” and no one can claim a right to bring back mortal remains of a foreigner to India.
Dismissing the plea, the bench said, “Hazrat Shah was a Pakistani citizen and has no constitutional right… the practical difficulties related to exhumation. As a matter of first principle, it would not be right for this court to direct the transportation of the mortal remains of a citizen of a foreign state to India.”
Advocate, appearing for petitioner Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed, said that the saint has no family in Pakistan, whereas, at the dargah in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj, he was the Sajjada-nashin (spiritual successor).
Seeking direction to the Central government to bring mortal remains of the saint to India, the advocate for Sufi Saint said he was born in Prayagraj and migrated to Pakistan and later he got Pakistani citizenship in 1992.
The bench said that if he was an Indian citizen, it could have asked the government to make efforts to bring back his mortal remains. For a foreign citizen, no one can seek the exhumation of mortal remains from another country for bringing them to India.
“He was elected as the Sajjada Nashin of the shrine viz. Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed Mohammad Shah in 2008 in Prayagraj. He executed his will in 2021 expressing a desire to be buried in the shrine. (at Prayagraj). He died in Dhaka where he was buried. There are difficulties in entertaining such a petition,” the bench observed.