New Delhi, Aug. 25: The Supreme Court today stayed the deportation of model Ujjwala Raut’s estranged husband after the British national said the order to leave the country had been passed without hearing him, reports our legal correspondent.

“It is a completely illegal order,” Craig Maxwell Sterry’s lawyer told the court.

He also objected to the ground on which the August 12 deportation order, which gave him 72 hours to leave the country, had been passed. It classifies an “international filmmaker of repute as a threat to public security” he said.

Craig had moved the Goa bench of Bombay High Court after being served the order, but failed to get any relief. “My client cannot meet his daughter… can’t contest his divorce… only because his wife (in picture), who is an influential supermodel, wants him out of the country,” his lawyer said.

The court stayed Craig’s deportation till the high court bench disposed of his petition. It also asked the high court to decide the case by September 14.