India, Sept. 1 -- The Supreme Court on Monday said an order of externment directly impinges upon the valuable fundamental freedoms guaranteed to a citizen, and it cannot be made as a matter of routine.

A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu quashed an externment order passed in November last year against a man who was directed to remove himself from the territorial limits of Raigarh and contiguous districts in Chhattisgarh for one year.

The bench said the externment order was "infirm and indefensible" and cannot be sustained for want of any cogent reasons in support thereof.

"Further, merely because multiple criminal cases have been registered against a person would not, ipso facto, be a ground for ordering externment," it s...