RIP Soli Sorabjee: A champion of freedom of speech

Former Attorney General and Constitutional law expert Soli Sorabjee passed away on Friday morning after he contracted Covid-19, his family said.

Born in 1930, Sorabjee was enrolled at the Bar with the Bombay High Court in 1953. In 1971, he was designated as the senior advocate by the Supreme Court. The 91-year-old, who was in the legal profession for nearly seven decades, had served as the Attorney General for India from 1989-90 and then from 1998-2004.

He was also the Solicitor General of India from 1977-80 when the first non-Congress government was at the Centre.

Sorabjee was appointed as UN Special Rapporteur for Nigeria in 1997.

Read: Former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee passes away after contracting Covid-19

He joined the UN Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and was its chairman from 1998 to 2004. He was also a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague from 2000 to 2006.

In March 2002, Soli Sorabjee was awarded the Padma Vibhushan for his defence of the freedom of expression and the protection of human rights. He fought for the freedom of speech time and again in the Supreme Court and argued for limiting the police power of the state and a vibrant democracy protected from overreach by Prime Ministers and Governors.

He worked on the Citizen's Justice Committee which represented pro bono the 1984 anti-Sikh riots victims.

Some of the landmark cases in which he had appeared before the Supreme Court are Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), SR Bommai v. Union of India (1994), BP Singhal v. Union of India (2010).

Not just an advocate, but Sorabjee was also a prolific writer. Some of his books are: The Laws of Press Censorship in India (1976), The Emergency, Censorship and the Press in India, 1975-77 (1977 and Law and Justice (2004).

Apart, from being an advocate and writer, there was another self of Sorabjee that added a different dimension to his dynamic character: One who loved jazz. He was one of the prime architects of the annual Jazz Yatra