The Supreme Court has a host of cases, most importantly regarding the right to personal and civil liberties of journalist Siddique Kappan, activists Gautam Navlakha and Teesta Setalvad, and the long-pending appeals filed by students against the Karnataka hijab ban, lined up in the first working week of its new ‘master of roster’, Chief Justice U.U. Lalit.
A Bench of Chief Justice Lalit and S. Ravindra Bhat is scheduled to hear Mr. Kappan’s plea for bail on August 29.
The Kerala journalist, represented by advocate Haris Beeran, said he has already spent two years behind bars on “trumped-up charges” merely due to his zest to discharge his professional duty to report on the “infamous case” of the alleged rape and murder of a Dalit girl at Hathras in Uttar Pradesh in 2020.
