Mumbai, Dec. 17: Encounter specialist and high-profile police inspector Daya Nayak has been asked by Bombay High Court to surrender his passport and seek its permission before leaving the city.

The ruling, usually reserved for criminals, came today when the court was hearing Nayak’s petition questioning the jurisdiction of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court, which has instituted a police inquiry against him.

Nayak, Bollywood’s favourite cop and the “real-life inspiration” for such movies as Kagaar and Ram Gopal Verma’s Ab Tak Chhappan, has 83 encounter killings to his credit. However, of late, he has been under a cloud with former journalist and self-acknowledged Chhota Shakeel mole Ketan Tirodkar telling the MCOCA court that Nayak had links with the underworld.

Dismissing Nayak’s plea, the high court said the MCOCA court could take up a private complaint, that of Tirodkar, and order an inquiry against him. Nayak had questioned the MCOCA court’s action against him on three counts. He had asked how the court was taking up the case when a similar case was pending in the high court; why it had allowed a special police team to investigate the charges against him and why it had entertained the private plea of a man who had confessed his links with Shakeel.

Tirodkar had alleged that Nayak extorted money from businessmen and arranged fake encounters, bumping off underworld characters from one group at the behest of another.

In a 27-page confessional to the MCOCA court, Tirodkar also detailed how Nayak and he had engineered a fake encounter with a Dubai-returned boy and told Gujarat police that the “gangster” had come to India to kill the state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi.

The boy, Tirodkar said, had come to India to seek help from the government to locate some of his family members who went missing after the riots last year.

After the high court’s observation, Tirodkar said the ruling was a validation of his charges against the policeman.