Ashok Kumar Sivaram (middle)
Ashok Kumar Sivaram, the Indian businessman who was detained by the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), has filed an application for mandamus at an Accra high court.
The applicant wants the court to declare that the decision by the GIS to accept his application for visa on arrival without the requisite statutory fees is a deliberate attempt to decline the process.
According to Ashok, the said application and the decision made by the GIS as an administrative official was unfair, unreasonable and unsupported by law.
Mandamus
Lawyers for the businessman also want the court to order the GIS, headed by Kwame Asuah Takyi, to accept the requisite statutory fees to process the visa on arrival and issue same.
Ashok also is asking the court to make an order of Mandamus directed at the respondents – Minister of the Interior and Director/Controller of Immigration – to restore his residence/work permit which was cancelled by the GIS on the basis of the Deportation Order dated May 15, 2017, which has been quashed by the high court in a ruling dated July 31, 2017.
Aside cost, the businessman wants a perpetual injunction restraining the respondents, agents, assigns, privies or anyone acting on the authority of the respondents from making any attempt to remove him from the jurisdiction or harass him in whatever shape or form.
A few weeks ago an Accra high court had ordered the GIS and Ambrose Dery, the minister, to immediately release Ashok from detention.
The court, presided over by Justice Kweku T. Ackaah-Boafo, held that there was no valid reason for the Service to detain the man.
He retorted, “This is not a banana republic; this is a country with laws…
“If you are going to charge him, charge him; what’s the basis for detaining him? Why is he in custody?” he queried.
The judge therefore instructed the Service to regularize the stay of Ashok in Ghana, if it failed to charge him for any wrongdoing.
Suit
The businessman sued Dery and the head of Immigration Service for illegally deporting him.
In the deportation order, Ashok was accused of acquiring a “forged marriage certificate in support of his application for citizenship in Ghana.”
He was deported on June 1, 2017 and fought his deportation through the lawyer who is based in Ghana.
But the court, in a ruling on July 31, 2017 stated that Ashok was illegally deported and ordered the two defendants to ensure his safe return to Ghana.
Habeas Corpus
Ashok was however, detained on August 2, 2017 when he arrived in Ghana at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), despite the verdict of the court.
Unsatisfied with the posture of the GIS and the other respondents, lawyer for Ashok, Gary Nimako Marfo, filed an ex-parte application seeking an order of Habeas Corpus directed at the respondents.
By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson