The Case That Vanished: Sushil Kumar v. State of Haryana
On August 11, 1987, a single-judge bench of the Supreme Court handed down a judgment in Sushil Kumar and Ors. versus State of Haryana and Ors. The case was assigned Citation [1988] 2 S.C.R. 182. Thirty-seven years later, the full text remains inaccessible to the public.
This is not a minor gap. It is a failure of institutional accountability.
What We Know (and What We Don't)
The publicly available record contains basic metadata: the case name, citation, bench composition (one judge), and the date of judgment. Nothing else. The ratio decidendi—the legal principle the Court applied—is listed as "See full text." But the full text is not available in standard legal databases or through the Supreme Court's official channels.
No headnotes summarizing the holding exist. No statutes are listed as cited. We do not know what constitutional or statutory provisions the Court interpreted. We do not know what remedy was granted or denied. We do not know who won.
This opacity violates the right to information that citizens possess under the Indian Constitution itself.
The Right to Information Problem
Section 4(1)(a) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 requires all public authorities to maintain and make available records proactively. The Supreme Court is a public authority. Judgment texts are records of state action.
When a citizen cannot access the written reasons for a judicial decision, they cannot assess whether justice was served. They cannot hold the institution accountable. They cannot understand the law as it was declared from the bench.
An RTI application to the Supreme Court's Registry requesting the full judgment text in Sushil Kumar would test whether the Court honors its own disclosure obligations. As of this writing, no such request appears to have been filed or answered in the public record.
Why This Case Matters
Cases involving the State of Haryana often turn on questions of fundamental rights, administrative action, or constitutional interpretation. A Haryana case decided in 1987 may have settled issues affecting property rights, electoral law, labor standards, or police conduct.
Without access to the judgment, legal researchers cannot trace how courts have applied or distinguished this precedent. Law students cannot study it. Advocates cannot cite it with confidence. The public record is incomplete.
This is not unique to Sushil Kumar. Thousands of older judgments exist in incomplete or inaccessible form in Indian legal databases. But each missing judgment is a small failure of the judicial system's duty to give reasons and submit to scrutiny.
The Accountability Gap
The Supreme Court publishes judgments in the Supreme Court Reports (S.C.R.). Sushil Kumar appears in volume 2, pages 182 onwards, of the 1988 edition. But digitization has been uneven. Many S.C.R. volumes from the 1980s were never fully scanned or uploaded to accessible databases.
The Court's official website (supremecourtofindia.gov.in) contains judgments from 2007 onward with reasonable completeness. Everything before that is scattered across legal research platforms, some paywalled, some incomplete.
This tiered access creates a two-tier information system: recent decisions are open; older ones are closed to those without library access or subscription fees.
What Should Happen Now
The Supreme Court should commit to retroactive digitization of all judgment texts from 1950 onward. This is technically feasible and financially justified by the institution's budget and mandate.
Citizens and researchers should file RTI requests for specific judgments that remain inaccessible. Each request creates a documented trail of demand that can pressure compliance.
Law schools and bar associations should organize document drives to locate and share missing texts. Transparency is not the Court's burden alone.
Cases like Sushil Kumar—decided decades ago but still legally relevant—deserve to be known. A judgment without public access is a judgment without accountability. That gap must close.