Nov 16 2025 to Nov 16 2025 5:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

As the Supreme Court of India completes seventy-five years, how do we understand its role in shaping the country’s institutions and democratic ideals? Has it remained a counter-majoritarian voice, and how has it navigated questions of accountability, transparency and constitutional promise?

Join us for a conversation that brings together former judges, lawyers and scholars to reflect on the Court’s evolving legacy, drawing from the book [In]complete Justice: The Supreme Court at 75. The discussion features Justice S. Muralidhar, Justice N. Santosh Hegde, Dr. Aditya Sondhi and Radhika Chitkara, as they explore the intersections of law, legitimacy and justice in contemporary India.

Speakers

Justice N Santosh Hegde
Former Judge, Supreme Court of India
Justice Santosh Hegde joined the Bar in 1965 and became a Senior Advocate in 1984. He served as Advocate General for the State of Karnataka from 1984 to 1988 and became Additional Solicitor General of India in 1989. 

In 1998, he was appointed Solicitor General of India. Justice Hegde went on to become a Judge of the Supreme Court of India in 1995 and served in this role until 2005. He was Chairman of the Central Administrative Tribunal between 2005 and 2006. Justice Hegde held the position of Lokayuta of the State of Karnataka from 2006 to 2011. 

Aditya Sondhi
Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India.
Dr Aditya Sondhi is a Senior Advocate practising before the Supreme Court of India. He has served as Additional Advocate General for the State of Karnataka from April 2016 to April 2018 and has been appointed Amicus Curiae in several matters of public importance. He appears regularly before various High Courts in the country. Dr Sondhi has taught constitutional law, arbitration and professional ethics at the National Law School of India University, from where he graduated in 1998. He has also taught a specially curated credit course on ‘Courts and National Security’ and has contributed to the Oxford Handbook on the Indian Constitution. He was invited to appear before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs instituted in connection with criminal law reforms in 2023.

Dr Sondhi has lectured widely in India, as also in the UK at Oxford University, London School of Economics, SOAS, King’s College London and Bristol University. He holds a PhD from Mysore University and has published three books of non-fiction with Penguin (India), including his most recent Poles Apart, which examines the relationship between military and democracy in India and Pakistan.

Dr Sondhi appears in matters of criminal and constitutional law, with a special interest in human rights advocacy. He has appeared pro bono in several death penalty cases before the Supreme Court of India including Munna Pandey v State of Bihar, which lays down cardinal principles of a fair trial. He has instituted the Beena Sondhi Scholarship for an LLM in Human Rights, Conflict and Justice at SOAS, University of London in memory of his late mother. He hosts Podcaste — a podcast for conversations around caste.

S Muralidhar
Former Chief Justice, High Court of Orissa
S Muralidhar, the editor of ‘[In] Complete Justice: The Supreme Court at 75’, enrolled as an Advocate in Chennai in 1984 and shifted his law practice to New Delhi in 1987. He was awarded a PhD by the University of Delhi in 2002. He was an Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court of India till his elevation as a Judge of the High Court of Delhi in May 2006. He was Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa from January 2021 till his retirement in August 2023. He was designated as a Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court in October 2023. He has also authored a book titled ‘Law Poverty and Legal Aid: Access to Criminal Justice’.

Radhika Chitkara
Assistant Professor (Law), Director of the Criminal Law Clinic, NLSB
Radhika Chitkara is an Assistant Professor (Law) and Director of the Criminal Law Clinic at National Law School of India University Bangalore. She is presently pursuing her PhD on ‘Policing Terror: A Legal Cartography of Institutions, Powers and Functions’ at NLSIU as the Dr. NR Madhav Menon Scholar and a UGC-DAAD Law and Social Transformation fellow. Radhika is a human rights scholar and practitioner with over twelve years of experience in the field of gender, civil liberties, and land and resource conflicts. She completed her BALLB(Hons.) from NLSIU in 2013, and LLM (Concentration in International Human Rights Law) from Harvard Law School in 2017.