Ketan Dayal, LL.M, Chanakya National Law University (Patna)
ABSTRACT
The right to life and personal liberty has been enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution which says: “No person shall be deprived of his life of personal liberty except according to procedure established by law”. We see that Article 21 reminds us of the famous clauses of Magna Carta that “No man shall be taken or imprisoned, disseized or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed save... by the law of the land”.1 We see that many of the provisions of our Constitution has been influenced from legal texts of various other countries and the aforementioned clause of Magna Carta is one more example of the same. Another significant feature of this right is that it is available to not only to the citizens but also to the non-citizens of India as the word used in the Article 21 is ‘person’ and not ‘citizen’.
If we talk about personal liberty, we must note that learned author A.V. Dicey in his book “An introduction to the study of the Law of the Constitution” has remarked: “The right to personal liberty as understood in England means in substance a person’s right not to be subjected to imprisonment, arrest, or other physical coercion in any manner that does not admit of legal justification. That anybody should suffer physical restraint is in England prima facie illegal, and can be justified on two grounds only, that is to say, either because the prisoner or person suffering restraint is accused of some offence and must be brought before the courts to stand his trial, or because he has been duly convicted of some offence and must suffer punishment for it.” We must note that Indian Laws are mostly influenced from English Laws and all these statements by eminent jurists help us give an idea about development and origin of this right.
Over the years, the ambit of Right to life has expanded greatly, from Right to live with human dignity, Right to privacy, Right to travel abroad to many more concepts, we will discuss all these developments in the detailed project. The researcher will also look into the transformation of the meaning of Article 21 from A. K. Gopalan’s Case to Maneka Gandhi’s Case and after it. In this project, the researcher will take a holistic approach to have an in-depth study of the given topic.
Keywords: Right, Life, Liberty, England, Laws
