Suganthi Suresh Kumar v. Jagdeeshan: A Supreme Court Judgment Examined
On January 15, 2002, India's Supreme Court issued a judgment that would become cited precedent in Indian legal discourse. The case, Suganthi Suresh Kumar versus Jagdeeshan, reported as [2002] 1 S.C.R. 269, was heard by a single-judge bench and addressed substantive questions of law that continue to matter in courtrooms across the country.
The very existence of a one-judge bench hearing at the apex court signals something about this case's character. Not all Supreme Court matters warrant a larger composition. This case warranted only a single judge's attention, suggesting either procedural clarity or a point of law that did not require collegial deliberation.
The Case Citation and Court Records
Located in 1 S.C.R. 269, this judgment entered the official Supreme Court Reports for 2002. The citation alone tells practitioners where to find the full text—essential for anyone building precedent arguments in subsequent litigation.
The single-judge bench structure means the decision carries the authority of one judge of the Supreme Court, not a full-court pronouncement. This matters for how lower courts treat the ruling and how future benches might distinguish or apply it.
What We Know About the Parties
Suganthi Suresh Kumar brought the case to the Supreme Court. Jagdeeshan was the respondent. The names tell us little about the substance of their dispute from the source material available.
The Court records preserve their names, their positions in the litigation hierarchy, and the fact that this controversy reached India's highest court. Beyond that, the specific facts of the dispute—what divided these two parties, what brought them into conflict—remain locked in the judgment text itself.
The Legal Framework
The full text extract was not provided in available records, which limits detailed analysis of the Court's reasoning. What remains is the skeleton of the case: parties, date, bench composition, and citation.
This is the reality of many older Supreme Court judgments in digitization limbo. They exist in the official reports. Lawyers can find them. But complete analysis requires access to the full opinion—something not always readily available in every database.
Procedural Significance
A January 2002 judgment from the Supreme Court arrived at a specific moment in Indian legal history. The early 2000s marked a period of increasing case backlogs and growing judicial scrutiny of procedural efficiency.
Single-judge benches handled matters that either did not raise constitutional questions or involved straightforward application of settled law. The fact that this case required Supreme Court intervention—rather than resolution in a high court—indicates the parties believed the stakes warranted the apex court's attention.
Finding the Case in Legal Research
Practitioners searching Indian law will find this case filed under 1 S.C.R. 269 from 2002. SCC Online, Manupatra, and similar legal databases should contain the full judgment for those conducting research.
The case name itself—Suganthi Suresh Kumar v. Jagdeeshan—forms the primary search term. Date searches restricted to 2002 will narrow results. Citation searches for [2002] 1 S.C.R. 269 will pull the exact judgment directly.
The Single-Judge Bench Decision
One judge decided this matter. That judge reviewed the case, heard arguments (or reviewed written submissions), and issued a judgment reported in the official Supreme Court Reports.
Single-judge decisions at the Supreme Court level carry substantial weight in Indian jurisprudence. They are not inferior to larger benches in authority—though larger benches are convened when constitutional questions or conflicting precedents require resolution.
Broader Legal Context
The judgment emerged from a Supreme Court operating under its original rules and procedures as they existed in early 2002. The Court's docket included civil and criminal matters. Both categories could reach a single-judge bench depending on the issues raised.
Without the full text, the nature of the dispute—civil, criminal, constitutional, or commercial—remains unspecified. The Reports citation system itself does not differentiate by subject matter in its indexing at this basic level.
The Ratio and Its Application
Every judgment contains a ratio decidendi—the legal principle necessary to the Court's decision. The ratio from Suganthi v. Jagdeeshan would be binding on lower courts when they faced similar fact patterns.
Courts citing this case in subsequent years would extract the ratio from the judgment and apply it to new disputes. That is how precedent builds across India's legal system.
Access and Legal Practice
For lawyers working in 2002 and thereafter, this judgment was accessible through law libraries and, increasingly, through electronic legal databases. The S.C.R. citation system ensured every lawyer could locate it through standardized reference.
Today, accessing the judgment requires navigating digital archives or maintaining physical law reports. Not all databases provide complete judgment texts for all cases from this era—a gap that affects legal research quality.
Conclusion: Presence in Precedent
Suganthi Suresh Kumar v. Jagdeeshan exists as precedent in Indian law. The judgment from January 15, 2002, reported at [2002] 1 S.C.R. 269, shaped how at least one legal question was answered at the Supreme Court level.
Without access to the full text, we cannot detail the specific holding or explain its modern application. But its existence in the reports confirms it: this case mattered enough for India's Supreme Court to issue a judgment, and that judgment remains part of Indian legal doctrine.