The Daily Fix: By delaying Kashmir petitions, courts are behaving like emergency

ISLAMABAD: In 2017, delivering a judgement recognising privacy as a fundamental right, the Supreme Court of India decided to legally bury the biggest embarrassment in its history. The court expressly overruled its decision in a matter scholars call the “habeas corpus case”. In 1976, the Supreme Court had ruled that habeas corpus, a writ directing the authorities to produce a person before the court, stood suspended in times of Emergency. This decision ensured that thousands of people who had been illegally detained by the Indira Gandhi regime remained in jail, Scroll.in has reported.

Why was it so important to formally overrule a decision that had already lost its credibility over the last four decades?