Delhi High Court’s Interim Order and the Right to Appeal
- Delhi High Court Under Siege: Is Street Protest a Substitute for Legal Appeal?
- Disagreement Is Legal, Intimidation Is Not
- Educated Protesters and Willful Legal Blindness
- Publicity Over Principle?
- Celebrities, Activism, and Legal Ignorance
Courts Must Be Criticised, Not Besieged
A group of women activists recently surrounded the Delhi High Court, shouting slogans against its interim order suspending the life sentence of Kuldeep Singh Sengar.
One may agree or disagree with the court’s decision—but in a constitutional democracy, disagreement with a judicial order has a clear remedy: appeal to a higher court, in this case the Supreme Court of India.
Does anyone have the right to gherao a High Court, create disorder, and attempt to pressure judges through street protest? Does such conduct strengthen justice—or weaken the rule of law?
In this article, former Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju examines the legal, constitutional, and moral implications of turning court premises into protest grounds, and questions whether publicity has begun to replace principle in modern activism.
Women activists gheraoed the Delhi High Court over its interim order suspending Kuldeep Sengar’s sentence. Justice Markandey Katju questions whether a protest can replace the constitutional right to appeal....
Women 'activists' gherao Delhi High Court over Sengar order
By Justice Markandey Katju
A division bench of the Delhi High Court passed an order on 23.12.2025 suspending the life sentence awarded by the trial court to Kuldeep Singh Sengar.
I expressed my opinion in an article and a video interview that the order of the bench was absolutely correct.
One may or may not agree with the High Court order or my view, but he/she has a right to appeal against the order to the Supreme Court.
But does one have a right to surround the Delhi High Court and shout slogans against the order, as was done recently by several women, perhaps imagining that they were above the law ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUJAbueG5k
The demonstrating women all appear to be educated.
They would therefore be knowing that if anyone has a grievance against a court order he/she can appeal against it to a higher court (in this case, the Supreme Court). Why don't they go there instead of creating a ruckus before the Delhi High Court? Or do the women leading the demonstration think that that would not get them as much publicity as shouting and screaming before the High Court, and creating a mayhem and pandemonium there, would get?
I was also surprised that folk singer Neha Singh Rahore has chosen to jump into the fray, though she knows nothing about the law. Must she scream Ka Ba on every topic under the sun, even if she is totally ignorant about it?
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, of the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
