There are cases that change the law, and there are cases that reveal this. The Nathari case did both. I still remember the first time I heard the name Surendra Kohli. It was everywhere: on television, in newspapers, in silent conversations. A quiet Noida neighborhood has been transformed into the National Horror Theater. Police exhumed human remains, cameras broadcast every frame, and the country watched as if justice could be served through the spectacle. Before the court began its work, the public had already issued its ruling.
Years later, in 2021, as a student at NALSAR, I chose a course called “Defending Death Penalty Cases,” taught by Yog Mohit Chaudhary, who had represented Kohli with Bayushi Roy and later won his acquittal. Reading the case through the discipline of the process was troubling. The documents told a story far removed from what the public was told. They revealed 60 days of continuous police detention, a confession recorded without access to a real lawyer, the presence of an investigating officer during the recording, and recoveries from places already known to the public. The forensic path was incomplete. The case showed how public pressure and investigative shortcuts can build a fiction strong enough to pass for truth.
On November 11, the Supreme Court ruled in Surendra Kohli v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2025)She used her curative powers to overturn her 2011 ruling that confirmed the death sentence. The court described this as a “clear miscarriage of justice,” noting that two contradictory results emerged from identical evidence. As for the confessions and recovery processes that formed the basis of the conviction in one case, they were rejected in 12 other cases. The bench noted that “two sets of findings on the same evidentiary basis cannot legally coexist.” It was a quiet but momentous corrective action.
The ruling is precise in tone but devastating in implication. It reveals how the structure of the investigation collapsed under his wheel. The accused remained in police custody for long periods, legal assistance was routine, and there was no independent verification of the voluntariness of the confession. Recovery records were inconsistent, and forensic teams found no traces of blood, tissue, or human remains “consistent with multiple homicides and dismemberment within the home.” Even DNA evidence, which proved the identity of the victims, was unable to link the accused to the murder. This case, based on assumption, has been supported by repetition.
This failure is not exceptional; It’s my system. Our criminal justice process still treats confession as the focus of investigation. It values immediate acceptance more than the painstaking pursuit of scientific evidence. This culture encourages coercion and distorts the truth. When an investigation begins with a presumption of guilt, each step becomes a ritual of confirmation. A fair trial would by then already be a formality.
The Nathari case is also a study in how media narratives shape justice. From the first report, guilt was treated as a fact. Prime-time broadcasters filled in the investigative gaps with fiction. The public’s appetite for closure was met with a performance of certainty. The accused became a character in the national drama, and due process became the villain. This is not unique to India. The Aarushi Talwar case, the Amanda Knox trial in Italy, and the wrongful conviction of the Central Park Five in the United States all show how media attention can amplify fear and flatten complexity. Criminologist David Garland once observed that modern societies seek reassurance through punishment; The media, eager for stories, becomes the stage on which this reassurance is achieved.
But the damage is profound. When the media becomes accusatory, the investigation becomes defensive, and the courts are hesitant. The presumption of innocence, the moral core of criminal law, is eroding in full view of public opinion. What emerges is not justice but theater. In the case of Al-Nathari, this theater overcame reason.
The cost of this collapse is shared by everyone. The accused loses years of his life; Families of victims lose the truth; The public loses confidence in institutions. The same court noted that negligence and delay eroded the investigation and prevented the real culprit from being found. It is a grim irony that in the pursuit of justice, the innocent and bereaved are left without answers.
The ruling issued by the Supreme Court is a sobering reminder that justice is not a luxury, but rather a condition of legitimacy. Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution not only prohibit arbitrary actions of the state; They define what fair governance means. The authority of the law depends on its ability to act with restraint. When the state abandons this restriction, punishment becomes a spectacle and legitimacy becomes a pretext.
The case also calls for deeper thinking about the philosophy of punishment itself. Legal theorists, from H. L. A. Hart to John Rawls, have insisted that the justice of punishment lies not in its severity but in its procedure. If the process is unfair, even legal punishment becomes immoral. The Nathari case proves that due process is not a technical formality; It is the moral core of democracy. When procedures break down, it becomes difficult to distinguish justice from revenge.
Nathari’s deepest tragedy lies in what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called the “misuse of memory”—the way societies remember what suits their concerns and forget what complicates them. The public memory of the case should never be rewritten, even after the Supreme Court ruling. A man who was labeled a monster will always live under that label. Therefore the true test of democracy is not how it judges guilt, but how it corrects the wrong when the truth changes.
The Nathari case will remain a study in danger of certainty. It reminds us that justice requires patience, skepticism, and courage. It requires investigators who collect rather than guess, a media that provides information rather than action, and citizens who wait before they condemn.
When the court finally spoke, it did not talk about innocence or guilt. He spoke of failure, the kind that quietly grows within organizations when vigilance is replaced by spectacle. Justice, when it finally arrived, was anything but dramatic. It arrived as truth often does – late, fragile, and painfully human.
The writer is an academic lawyer and public policy specialist specializing in constitutionality and access to justice
(Tags for translation) Surendra Kohli
