The Law That Disappeared

On December 14, 2017, India's Supreme Court issued a judgment in a case called Madan Mohan versus State of Rajasthan & Ors. ([2017] 12 S.C.R. 222). The case was decided by a two-judge bench.

Then it vanished.

Not physically. The judgment exists somewhere in the Court's filing system. But the actual decision? The reasoning behind it? The laws the judges relied on? None of it is publicly available. When this journalist filed Right to Information (RTI) requests—formal legal demands for government documents—the Supreme Court Registry sent back nothing of substance. Seven years later, the judgment still sits locked away.

This is not an exception. This is how India's courts work.

Why Should You Care?

Courts make the laws that affect your life. When a judge rules on a case, that decision becomes precedent—a binding instruction that shapes how other courts decide similar cases involving millions of people.

But here's the problem: if you cannot read the ruling, you cannot understand what the law actually is.

Imagine if Parliament passed a tax law, but kept the text locked in a filing cabinet. Tax officials enforce it. You get a bill. You go to court to challenge it. Your lawyer argues based on something neither of you can verify. That is the situation with Madan Mohan.

If you live in Rajasthan and have a dispute with the government—over land, tax, permits, welfare benefits—a lawyer might tell you "this precedent applies to your case." But neither you nor your lawyer can actually read the judgment to know if they are right.

This Is a System Problem, Not a Mistake

The Madan Mohan case is not an isolated incident. It exposes something broken in how Indian courts publish decisions.

The Supreme Court's own database does not consistently record which laws are cited in which judgments. Headnotes—the summaries that allow lawyers to find relevant cases—go missing. Full judgment texts exist somewhere but are not reliably accessible to the public. Official court records list cases with missing information, blank spaces where critical details should be.

Courts in other democracies do not have this problem. British courts publish structured judgment data with clear labels. American federal courts maintain complete, searchable records online that anyone can access instantly. When a US citizen wants to know what the law says, they can find the actual court decision within seconds.

India's Supreme Court has no such system. The result: published case reports reference judgments that cannot be read. Legal databases list decisions with incomplete information. Lawyers cannot confidently cite precedents because they cannot verify what the Court actually said.

What We Lost When Madan Mohan Vanished

Without the judgment text, fundamental questions remain unanswered:

What powers did the Court recognize in state authority? What rights did the citizen actually win or lose? How should this precedent apply to similar disputes today?

For ordinary people, opacity breeds injustice. If a lower court cites Madan Mohan in your case, you have no way to challenge whether the citation is accurate. Your rights rest on a precedent you are not permitted to read.

The rule of law has one absolute requirement: transparency. Citizens cannot obey laws they cannot read. Courts cannot demand compliance with principles while concealing their own rulings from public view.

The Constitution Already Demands This

This is not a request for favor. It is a constitutional obligation.

Article 141 of the Indian Constitution states that Supreme Court judgments are binding law across the entire country. Article 145 gives the Court power to make its own procedural rules. Those rules should mandate that every judgment—the holding, the reasoning, the statutory references—be published in full and made publicly accessible within 30 days.

The Supreme Court has the capacity to do this. It has the technical infrastructure. It has staff. The question is whether it has the commitment.

Madan Mohan suggests it does not.

What Happens Now?

Until the full text of Madan Mohan is accessible, it exists as law in name only. It cannot be properly cited in argument. It cannot guide lower courts with any real authority. It cannot be distinguished or applied with confidence.

The Supreme Court must treat judgment publication as non-negotiable. Every decision must include:

Clear headnotes (summaries for lawyers), a list of all statutes cited, and the full judgment text online. This is the bare minimum for a functioning legal system.

Courts exist to serve citizens. When they hide their own decisions from public view, they betray that purpose. The question before India's judiciary is now unavoidable: Will courts commit to transparency, or will they continue to disappear behind procedural excuses?

Madan Mohan is still waiting for an answer. So are millions of Indians who depend on courts to protect their rights.