The Supreme Court on Thursday said every citizen has a right to sound sleep because it is fundamental to life.
SC made this observation while ruling that the police action on a sleeping crowd at a Baba Ramdev's rally at Ramlila Maidan in the capital.
"Sleep is essential for a human being to maintain the delicate balance of health necessary for its very existence and survival. Sleep is, therefore, a fundamental and basic requirement without which the existence of life itself would be in peril," the court said, terming it as a basic human right, reported The Times of India.
A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar was unanimous on their verdict that the police were wrong in clamping prohibitory orders under Section 144 of Criminal Procedure Code on June 4 last year.
Justice Chauhan in the order mentioned sleep as a fundamental right ‘crucial’ to life and said it is on par as right to privacy and right to food as a part of right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
"Right of privacy and the right to sleep have always been treated to be a fundamental right like a right to breathe, to eat, to drink, to blink etc," he said.
"Undoubtedly, reasonable regulation of time, place and manner of the act of sleeping would not violate any constitutional guarantee, for the reason that a person may not claim that sleeping is his fundamental right, and therefore, he has a right to sleep in the premises of the Supreme Court itself or within the precincts of Parliament," Justice Chauhan added noting sleep for a human being was a basic necessity and not a luxury.