Great Decision! Supreme Court appoints sign interpreter for a deaf lawyer

The supreme court recently on Friday appointed a sign interpreter for a deaf lawyer for a court proceeding. Over the past years the supreme court never appointed any sign interpreter at its own expenses. On 22^nd September when Advocate Sarah Sunny appeared in the court of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud the Chief Justice had said, “ This should have been done long ago. We took a lot of time to do this.”

Registrar Vivek Saxena passed the order directing the registry officials to take the necessary steps in this regard. Such truly and historic moments for all the citizens. Now we can truly say equality in the Indian justice system. The interpreter was seen interpreting the proceeding for Sarah, who was appearing virtually.

In the matter in which Sarah appeared in the court CJI told her, “Sarah I hope this was intelligible to you and you were able to understand what was going on in the court”.

The interpreter replied “Yes sir, she said it was very helpful”.

Sarah earlier filed an application before the Supreme Court registry requesting a court to appoint an Indian Sign Language (ISL) interpreter by Sarah’s senior Advocate on record Sanchita Ain.

To address these challenges Ain formally filed an application with the Supreme Court Registrar under Order 5 Rule 11 of the Supreme Court, Rules 2013.

Written by- Anmol Kashyap, City Law College, Semester- 3^rd year 5^th Semester an Intern under Legal Vidhiya

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