The
Habeas Corpus case received not one but five burials. First, there was the 44th Constitutional Amendment to Article 359, prohibiting the suspension of Articles 20 and 21 during any Emergency declared. Second, in 2007, the Supreme Court said this amendment had impliedly overruled the
Habeas Corpus case. Third, delivering the 25 February 2009 Khanna Memorial Lecture, Chief Justice MN Venkatachaliah said the majority judgment belonged to the dustbin of judicial history.
Fourth, in a 19 November 2010 decision, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court said that the
Habeas Corpus case was wrongly decided, and that there was no doubt that the majority decision had violated the fundamental rights of a large number of people in the country. And fifth, in the remarkable