JUDGMENT

Dipak Misra, J.-Leave granted in both the petitions.

2. “Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without Liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.” Thus spoke Bolingbroke.

3. Liberty is the precious possession of the human soul. No one would barter it for all the tea in China. Not for nothing Patrick Henry thundered: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death !” The thought of losing one’s liberty immediately brings in a feeling of fear, a shiver in the spine, an anguish of terrible trauma, an uncontrollable agony, a penetrating nightmarish perplexity and above all a sense of vacuum withering the very essence of existence. It is because liberty is deep as eternity and deprivation of it, infernal. May be for this protectors of liberty ask, “How acquisition of entire wealth of the world would be of any consequence if one’s soul is lost?” It has been quite often said that life without liberty is eyes without vision, ears