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NLU Delhi’s Anup Surendranath resigns from SC registry position after Yakub Memon death was ‘proverbial final nail’: Vows to talk more freely now

NLU Delhi professor Dr Anup Surendranath, who joined the Supreme Court in May 2014 as deputy registrar (research) under then-Chief Justice of India (CJI) RM Lodha as reported by Legally India at the time, has resigned from his apex court position yesterday.

Surendranath had set up NLU Delhi’s Death Penalty Project and was closely involved in the unsuccessful final appeals of convicted terrorist Yakub Memon, who was executed on Thursday morning.

According to a Facebook post Surendranath wrote:

I have been contemplating this for a while now for a variety of reasons, but what was played out this week at the Supreme Court was the proverbial final nail --- I have resigned from my post at the Supreme Court to focus on death penalty work at the University.

It is in many ways liberating to to regain the freedom to write whatever I want and I hope to make full use of that in the next few days to discuss the events that transpired at the Supreme Court this week.

He added in another post:

It would be silly and naive to see the events of the last 24 hours at the Supreme Court as some triumph of the rule of law --- the two orders at 4pm on 29th July and 5am on 30th July (and the reasoning adopted therein) are instances of judicial abdication that must count amongst the darkest hours for the Supreme Court of India.

He declined to comment further when contacted by Legally India.

The resignation was first reported by Live Law.

For a full account of the night and the morning that Yakub Memon died, and the lawyers who fought for him, click here.

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