SUN II BATRA II Vs. DELHI ADMINISTRATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Judgments of the court were delivered by (fw himsilf and Chinnappa Reddy, J.)-

(2.) THIS writ petition originated, epistolary fashion, in a letter by a prisoner, Batra, to a Judge of this court (one of us), fornplaining of a brutal asaault by a Head Warder on another prisoner, Prem Chand. Forms were forsaken since freedom was at stake and the letter wai posted on the bench to be metamorphosed into a habean proceeding and was judicially navigated with eclectic creativity, thanks to the humanist scholarship of Dr. Y. S. Chitale as amicus curiae, and the erudite passion for affirmative court action of Shri Soli Sorabjee, the learned Solicitor-General. Where tha prison process is dehumanised, forensic help, undeflected by the negative crudities of the adversary system, makes us dare where we might have daunted. The finest hour of justice comes when court and counsel constructively collaborate to fashion a relief in the individual case and fathom deeper to cure the institutional pathology which breeds wrongs and defies rights. Here, the individual is prisoner whose anus was allegedly pierced with a warder's baton and the institution is the Tihar Prison, right in the capital of the country and under the nose of the Home Ministry.

(3.) THE essence of the matter is that in our era of human rights consciousness the habeas writ has functional plurality and the constitutional regard for human decency and dignity is tested by this capability. We ideologically accept the words of Will Durant :