JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J. :— This writ petition originated, epistolery fashion, in a letter by a prisoner, Batra, to a judge of this Court (one of us), complaining of a brutal assault by a Head Warder on another prisoner, Prem Chand. Forms were forsaken since freedom was at stake and the letter was posted on the Bench to be metamorphosed into a habeas 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 the prison process is de-humanised, 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 a prisoner whose anus was allegedly pierced with a warders baton and the institution is the Tihar Prison, right in the capital of the country and under the nose of the Home Ministry.

The Perspect