Spotlight is a series where we shine the, well, spotlight on members of the legal fraternity who made the news over the past week.
This past week, the spotlight fell on Allahabad High Court Justice Atul Sreedharan, a judge who has spent his career on the judicial transfer merry-go-round.
His career thus far is marked by a orders curbing executive overreach and upholding the rights of minority communities, a tendency he has perhaps paid the price for.
Most recently, Justice Sreedharan's observations in an April 27 order regarding the functioning of human rights commissions across India led to a split verdict with his brother judge on the Division Bench passing a separate interim order.
While Justice Sreedharan observed that the human rights commissions across the country have failed to take suo motu cognizance in matters involving assaults and lynching of Muslims in the country, Justice Vivek Saran said that he does not agree with such sweeping observations.
Justice Sreedharan questioned National Human Rights Commission's (NHRC's) power to issue a direction for probe against madrasas and observed that human rights commissions were focusing on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
Justice Sreedharan also said that he was not aware of the NHRC taking suo motu cognizance in situations where vigilantes take the law in their own hands or harass ordinary citizens. In this regard, he highlighted the harassment of people over the nature of their relationships, saying,
"Even having a cup of coffee at a public place with the person of different religion becomes a fearful act sometimes," Justice Sreedharan said.
Justice Sreedharan's first transfer away from his parent High Court of Madhya Pradesh came in 2023 after he himself requested the Supreme Court Collegium for the same since his elder daughter would be entering law practice in the same High Court next year.
After spending two years at the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court, he was repatriated to the Madhya Pradesh High Court in March 2025.
In August, the Collegium recommended that he be transferred to the Chhattisgarh High Court.
However, in a strange move, in October 2025, the Collegium recalled its recommendation and said that his transfer would be to the Allahabad High Court instead. A statement released by the Collegium revealed that this was done following a request from the Central government to reconsider the earlier recommendation. Within days of the fresh recommendation, the government notified Justice Sreedharan's transfer to Allahabad.
While no official reason was provided by the Collegium or the Central government, those in the legal community opined that this was likely a result of the government being displeased by Justice Sreedharan's judicial record.
With impending retirements and the elevation of senior Madhya Pradesh High Court judges, Justice Sreedharan would have been part of the High Court Collegium as one of its three senior-most judges.
He would have been in a similar position a the Chhattisgarh High Court and played a crucial role of determining who gets elevated to its Bench. But at the Allahabad High Court, he was effectively at number seven in seniority. He is unlikely to have a role to play in the Collegium before his retirement in May 2028. His path to Chief Justiceship has also been effectively blocked by this move.
As he bid adieu to the Madhya Pradesh High Court for the second time, Justice Sreedharan said that transfers are an incident of service and that he was looking forward to serving at Allahabad.
However, his choice to quote Urdu poet Rahat Indori was perhaps more revelatory.
"The only thing permanent in universe is impermanence and I would like to look at the transfers in the words of Rahat Indori, the pride of Indore, who said: Jo aaj sahib-e-masnad hai kal nahi honge (those who are sitting on the throne today, will not be there tomorrow), kiraaye daar hain zaati makaan thodi hai (they are renters, it is not their house)," Justice Sreedharan said.
At the farewell event, several Bar leaders spoke out against the transfer, calling it a clear blow to judicial independence.
But if Justice Sreedharan's current innings at the Allahabad High Court is anything to go by, the judge is undeterred by these transfers.
The following is a background of the judge and a summary of some of his notable verdicts at each posting.
Justice Sreedharan began his legal career in Delhi, working in the chambers of the Senior Advocate and former Solicitor General of India Gopal Subramaniam from 1992 to 1997.
From 1997 to December 2000, he practiced independently in Delhi before shifting to Indore to practice before the Madhya Pradesh High Court and various trial courts. From October 2023 to February 2024, he represented the Madhya Pradesh government before the High Court.
In September 2005, he was appointed as a Central Government Counsel and appeared for the Union of India till September 2008. After two years, he was appointed as Central Government Counsel (Senior Panel) and continued appearing for the Union government until 2013.
On April 7, 2016, Justice Sreedharan was appointed as an additional judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court and made a permanent judge on March 17, 2018.
In March 2021, Justice Sreedharan granted anticipatory bail to a Catholic nun and School Principal Sister Bhagya, who who was booked under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance, 2020 for allegedly attempting to convert a school staff member of the school to Christianity.
During his tenure in Madhya Pradesh, Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which penalised sedition, was a huge topic of discussion with allegations that the government was using it to quash even rightful dissent.
While speaking at a webinar organised by RMLNLU Lucknow and CAN Foundation, Justice Sreedharan flagged the impact the colonial era law has on how judges function. He said that judges are also human beings and that when a person is charged of being anti-national, it does weigh in the minds of the judges.
On April 27, 2023, the Central government notified Justice Sreedharan's transfer to the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
At the J&K High Court, Justice Sreedharan quashed several preventive detention orders issued under statutes such as the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
While passing such an order in August 2023, Justice Sreedharan observed that a fundamentalist Muslim should not be equated with an extremist or a separatist. The judge criticised detaining authorities for justifying detention orders by loosely using the phrase without understanding what it means.
“Muslim who is a fundamentalist is merely someone who believes in the fundamentals of Islam and steadfastly pursues the same. It cannot have a negative bearing on his personality. The same is as a fundamentalist Muslim cannot be equated with an extremist or a separatist,” Justice Sreedharan said.
In another case, Justice Sreedharan ordered a district magistrate in Jammu to pay ₹10,000 as costs for ordering the detention of a man under the PSA without sound justification.
While granting bail to a UAPA accused, Justice Sreedharan took exception to the government making "copy-paste" arguments in such matters with similar allegations of national security threats, radical Islamism and allegiance to Pakistan.
The judge said that if the Court were to only rely on the State's apprehensions about internal security risks without any evidence, it would lead to the "inadvertent oppressive application of a draconian law resulting in the denial of liberty, unsupported by judicially cognizable material".
Justice Sreedharan also tried to speed up bail matters at the High Court, directing the Advocate General's (AG) office to immediately call for case diaries when a bail application is filed.
While heading a Division Bench, Justice Sreedharan pulled up the J&K administration on several occasions for ignoring Court orders with “utter disdain” and turning the justice system into a "cruel joke". The Court once noted that there were over 6,000 contempt of court petitions pending before the Court against government authorities.
In September 2024, a Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan imposed exemplary costs of ₹9 lakh on the administration for evading payments due from it to a contractor since 2015.
Justice Sreedharan also fiercely protected the High Court from allegations made by media organisations that he had gone on leave after National Investigation Agency Act (NIA Act) cases and habeas corpus matters were shifted from the bench headed by him. A Division Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan himself asked the Registrar Judicial to place the matter before then Acting Chief Justice and a suo motu contempt of court case was registered against the editors, correspondents and publishers of The Hindu and ETV Bharat English for their news reports on the matter.
After a little under two years, Justice Sreedharan was repatriated to Madhya Pradesh in March 2025.
Just a few months after Justice Sreedharan started his short-lived second innings at the Madhya Pradesh High Court, India launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.
At the time, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister Kunwar Vijay Shah made about Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, the Indian Army officer who briefed the media about Operation Sindoor. Shah referred to Colonel Qureshi as the "sister of the terrorists" who carried out the killings of 26 innocent Indians at Pahalgam.
A Division Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan registered a suo motu case and ordered the Director General of Police (DGP) to immediately register a first information report (FIR) against Shah for sowing the seeds of disharmony. Justice Sreedharan minced no words and termed Shah's comments as inexcusable, disparaging and dangerous to the armed forces itself. The matter was later transferred to the Supreme Court.
In July 2025, a Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan dealt with the case of a trial judge who was dismissed only on account of his judicial orders and not any allegations of corruption.
Not only did the Bench order its administrative side and the State government to pay compensation of ₹5 lakh to the judge, it also highlighted the "dismal" relationship between High Court judges and judges of the district judiciary, likening it to that between a feudal lord and a serf.
“The body language of the Judges of the District Judiciary when they greet a Judge of the High Court stops short of grovelling before the High Court Judge, making the Judges of the District Judiciary the only identifiable species of invertebrate mammals,” the Bench said.
The Court also highlighted the caste divide in the judiciary, opining that this adds to the passive subjugation of district judges.
Another Division Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan recalled an order passed by a High Court single-judge who had recommended an inquiry against a judicial officer for dropping serious charges against a person accused of embezzlement of lakhs of rupees in a land acquisition matter. The Bench said that the order passed by the single-judge was based on speculation and uncalled for. It even asked the High Court Registrar General to file an appeal against the order before the Supreme Court.
However, no such appeal was filed. After Justice Sreedharan's transfer to the Allahabad High Court, a Bench headed by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Justice withdrew the direction to file an appeal.
On November 11, 2025, Justice Sreedharan was sworn in as a judge of the Allahabad High Court.
One of the first orders passed by a Bench headed by him was to restrain the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government from demolishing a mosque in Fatehpur district.
Several months later, in February 2026 another Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan ruled that no permission was needed for holding a religious prayer meeting in a private property in UP.
In a separate case, the Court issued a notice under the Contempt of Courts Act to the District Magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police of Bareilly for restraining certain persons from offering namaz at a private property in Mohammad Ganj village.
The Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan ordered the deployment of two security guards for the protection of one Haseen Khan, who claimed that he and others were restrained from offering namaz at his private property.
In another case, a Bench headed by Justice Sreedharan held that the State is duty-bound to ensure that every community is able to hold prayers peacefully at a designated place of worship or on a private property without requiring official permission. The Bench also took a stern view of the local administration’s decision to limit the number of Muslim nazamis at a mosque in Sambhal and said that the authorities ought to resign if they cannot uphold law and order.
The Court emphasised that it is the State’s duty to ensure that the rule of law prevails under every circumstance.
“It is duty of the State to ensure that every community is able to offer worship peacefully in the designated place of worship, and if it is a private property, as already been held by the Court earlier, to perform worship without any permission from the State,” the Bench said.
Later while considering the same case, the Bench ordered the State to provide security to such persons.
In this March 2026 order, the Bench highlighted India's rich diversity and underscored that Article 25 gives every religion and faith in India an equal and immutable right to profess, practice and propagate their faith equally across the board without any "ifs and buts", subject only to public order, morality and health.
On April 27, Justice Sreedharan passed the latest, most talked about order and split verdict, pulling up human rights commissions for focusing on Madrassas rather than lynchings of muslims and moral vigilantism.
In his time at the Allahabad High Court, Justice Sreedharan has also passed verdicts protecting the rights of transgender persons. He ruled that passport authorities cannot require a transgender person to undergo a fresh medical examination to change their gender details on passports, once the district magistrate has issued a certificate recognising their gender.
He also protected the rights of disabled persons by directing State authorities to ensure the ability of such persons to easily access proper parking spaces and common facilities like lift, pavement, playgrounds, community centres and gym.
Justice Sreedharan has little over two years left as a judge and is due to retire in May 2028.