Minutes past midnight, on August 15, 1947, the echoes of Mahatma Gandhi ki jai and Bharat Mata ki jai reverberated through the Cannanore (now Kannur) jail where Communist leader A K Gopalan, then 43, ...

The case was brought by A.K. Gopalan, a communist leader. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Preventive Detention Act of 1950, which allowed the government to detain people without trial ...