The man known for ‘humanising law in India’, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer had just become the oldest former Supreme Court Judge of India turning 100 years old. He was responsible for presiding over some of the biggest cases in the nation’s history; most famous for the Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain case, which led to her declaring a nation-wide state of emergency.

  He is also the man who laid the foundation for Public Interest Litigation and prison jurisprudence in the country. Justice Krishna Iyer was born on the 13th November 1915 (according to the Malayalam calender) at Vaidyanathapuram near Palakkad in Kerala. In 1952 he was elected to the Kerala Legislative Assembly and in 1957 he became one of the ministers in the first Communist government in Kerala which he served till 1959. Ten years later, he was appointed as a Judge in the High Court of Kerala and shortly after that he became a member of the Law Commission of India. When he was....