New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said that the citizen's right to sleep is a fundamental right.

New Delhi: 

The Supreme Court has said that the citizen's right to sleep is a fundamental right.

A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar made the observation while hearing the case relating to the midnight crackdown on yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his supporters.

A citizen has a right to sound sleep because it is fundamental to life and falls within the purview of Article 21 of the Indian constitution, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.

Police cracked down on sleeping Ramdev supporters, who were assembled at Ramlila Maidan to protest corruption in the government in June last year.

"Sleep is essential for a human being to maintain the delicate balance of health necessary… . Sleep is, therefore, a fundamental and basic requirement…” the court said.

Terming it as a basic human right, the apex court ruled that police action on a sleeping crowd amounted to violation of their crucial right.

Though Justice Kumar wrote the lead judgment, Justice Chauhan elaborated on sleep as a fundamental right crucial to life and put it on the same plane as right to privacy and right to food.

"Right to privacy and the right to sleep have always been treated to be a fundamental right like a right to breathe, to eat, to drink etc," he said while slamming Delhi Police for using unwarranted force on the sleeping crowd, thereby breaching fundamental right to privacy.

Rejecting the police contention that the crowd was planning to disrupt peace, Justice Chauhan said, "To presume that a person was scheming to disrupt public peace while asleep would be unjust and would be entering into the dreams of that person."

Source: Times of India