In 1974, in a series of bombings carried out by the IRA in London, four Irish youth among others were arrested and convicted under an act hastily passed by parliament, the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Act provided for suspension of habeas corpus if a person was suspected of terrorism and conviction based solely on confessions. The judge even regretted his inability to pass the sentence of death on the convicts, who included women. In 1989, in an appeal, the court concluded that the confessions had been fabricated and forensic evidence favourable to the accused had been suppressed. The surviving convicts were acquitted of all charges. England has come a long way since the Guilford killings (Tony Blair publicly apologised for the gross miscarriage of justice in 2005) and, today, aggrieved residents of England can even appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, in India, quite often, the police and executive authorities are caught in the time warp of imperialism, giving scant respect to orders passed by the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

The subject of fundamental rights generated much debate in the Constituent Assembly, coming as it did against the backdrop of tumultuous civilian strife and severe restrictions on civil liberties imposed by the British government. The debate with respect to civil liberties carried forward to the Supreme Court, where the scope of fundamental rights and their interdependence was argued.

The Supreme Court in A.K. Gopalan vs State of Madras rejected the argument that Article 19 (civil liberties) and Article 21 (deprivation of life and liberty without the procedure established by law) were inextricably linked, on the ground that the purport of the respective articles and their scope was different. This narrow interpretation was later rejected and the unequivocal position today is that Article 14 (equality clause), Article 19 and Article 21 are linked and are on a different pedestal from other fundamental rights. The position is further fortified from the judgment in I.R. Coelho vs State of Tamil Nadu, where they have been made truly ‘sacrosanct’ and ‘transcendental’. The Supreme Court observed that only these three articles “...stand between the heaven of freedom into which Tagore wanted his country to awake and the abyss of unrestrained power”.

... contd.