In a parting speech marked by clarity, candor, and a touch of quiet fire, Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna used his farewell to spotlight a wound festering in the heart of the legal world—truth, he said, is in short supply.
Addressing a full house at a send-off hosted by the Supreme Court Bar Association, Khanna didn’t serve up platitudes. He went straight for the jugular: “A judge is above all a seeker of truth,” he began, invoking Gandhi’s belief that truth is God. But that ideal, he lamented, has dimmed. “We come across concealment and deliberate misstatement of facts,” he said, with a controlled frustration. “There’s a belief that unless some padding is done in evidence, a case will not succeed. This mindset is not only wrong—it doesn’t work. It burdens the courts. It corrodes the process.”
There were no half-measures in his reflection—just a clear-eyed account of what it means to uphold justice in a time when the raw material for it—truth—is often doctored or distorted.
After two decades on the bench, Justice Khanna leaves without a trace of ambivalence. “I have no mixed feelings. I’m simply happy. I feel blessed,” he said, recalling how even becoming a Delhi High Court judge had once felt like a dream. Now, having reached the summit of the judiciary, he’s ready to lay down the mantle.
In fact, he’s eager. “It feels like the beginning of a new life,” he said with a smile, confessing he wants to shake off the judge within. His voice softened as he spoke of his family—his mother, a Hindi literature professor at Lady Shri Ram College, who warned him against a legal career. “She told me straight-mindedness won’t help you earn. But she would be pleased now. I was never commercial-minded. And my decision was correct.”
He ended on a line simple, solemn, and true to the tone of the evening: “This is the place we call the Supreme Court. This is the place where justice finds home.”
And with that, the judge who sought truth walked away—quietly, uncompromisingly, and perhaps, still hoping the courtroom will find its way back to what it was meant to be.