Supreme Court of India

I. Background & Facts

1. The present Public Interest Litigation has been filed by one Shri Panshul Jindal, resident of New Delhi, under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, seeking compensation of ₹47,00,00,000 (Rupees Forty-Seven Crores) from Gravity, acting through the Union of India, for what the petitioner describes as "decades of gravitational harassment of the most personal and pendulous kind."

2. The petitioner submits that since the onset of puberty, he has been subjected to disproportionate and unreasonable gravitational force acting upon his thoracic region, resulting in physical discomfort, social embarrassment, and what his counsel poetically termed "a lifetime of downward oppression."

3. It is the case of the petitioner that each of his mammary appendages weighs approximately 14.2 kg, as certified by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, vide report dated 12.03.2024 (Annexure P-3). The total combined mass of 28.4 kg, it is argued, is subjected to a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s², resulting in a downward force of approximately 278.32 Newtons — a force the petitioner characterises as "cruel, unusual, and frankly exhausting."

4. The petitioner has placed on record several instances of alleged gravitational harassment, including but not limited to:

II. Amici Curiae & Intervening Parties

4A. This Court permitted the following parties to intervene as amici curiae, given the unprecedented nature of the proceedings:

Exhibit P-23: Timeline of major events, submitted by IIT Moob-bay as demonstrative evidence. Admitted over the objection of the Attorney General, who called it "unnecessarily dramatic."

III. Expert Evidence

5. The Court admitted expert testimony from Dr. V.K. Sharma, Professor and Head, Department of Gravitational Anomalies, IIT Moob-bay (formerly IIT Bombay, renamed by the petitioner's counsel in all filings, which this Court shall reluctantly adopt for consistency).[4]

6. Dr. Sharma, in his deposition dated 22.05.2024, submitted the findings of a six-year longitudinal study titled "Mammary Dynamics and Newtonian Exceptions: A Case Study in Gravitational Disproportionality" (IIT Moob-bay Research Publication No. 2023/MB/047). The key findings were:

7. Under cross-examination by the learned Attorney General, Dr. Sharma conceded that gravity acts uniformly on all mass regardless of its location on the body, and that the petitioner's condition, while statistically extraordinary, does not constitute a "targeted attack" by the gravitational force. He did, however, add — and this Court records verbatim — that "just because something is physics doesn't mean it's fair."

7A. Additional expert testimony was received from Dr. Fatima Sheikh, Senior Radiologist, AIIMS New Delhi, who submitted her MRI report (Annexure P-16), which had returned the error message "Error: Object exceeds field of view." Dr. Sheikh testified that in 27 years of radiology, she had "never seen an MRI machine simply give up."[5]

7B. Prof. Meera Iyer, Department of Biomechanics, IISc Bangalore, presented the engineering specifications of the world's first reinforced sports bra, designed specifically for the petitioner. Her testimony established that the garment requires titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V underwire — the same material used in aerospace landing gear — and a 7-hook industrial closure system. The technical specifications are maintained as an open-source project on GitHub[6], which this Court notes with some alarm has garnered 14,200 "stars" from what Prof. Iyer described as "a very online community of structural engineers and people who should probably go outside more."

7C. The Court also took note of the Goldman Sachs research report titled "Panshul's Chest: A Macro-Economic Risk Factor for South Asian Textile Markets" (October 2025), submitted by the petitioner as Annexure P-47.[7] The report estimates annual bra industry losses of ₹4.7 crore attributable to the petitioner alone, and recommends a SELL rating on the entire Indian innerwear sector. This Court observes that the economic impact of the petitioner's condition lends additional weight — both figuratively and literally — to the argument that some form of state assistance may be warranted.

7D. The Forbes India profile of the petitioner[8] was admitted as Annexure P-48 over the objection of the Attorney General, who argued that "media profiles are not evidence of gravitational harassment." This Court disagrees. When Forbes estimates an individual's chest at ₹47 Cr, it ceases to be journalism and becomes expert economic testimony.

Exhibit P-47(a): Goldman Sachs pie chart showing industries disrupted by the Jindal Factor. Admitted as demonstrative evidence accompanying Annexure P-47.

III. Submissions of the Petitioner

8. Learned Senior Counsel for the petitioner, Shri R.K. Mammaswamy, submitted that the petitioner's right to dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution is being violated on a daily — indeed, hourly — basis by the Respondent (Gravity). Counsel argued that Gravity, by exerting disproportionate force on the petitioner's thoracic appendages, has denied him:

9. Counsel relied upon Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) 1 SCC 248 for the proposition that the right to life includes the right to live with dignity, and submitted that "there is nothing dignified about knocking over a cup of chai every time you lean forward."

10. It was further submitted that the State, by failing to regulate Gravity or provide the petitioner with adequate gravitational subsidies (custom-engineered support garments, reduced GST on reinforced undergarments, priority seating on all modes of transport), has been complicit in the petitioner's suffering.

10A. In support of this submission, the petitioner filed the affidavit of Sub-Inspector Rajesh Yadav, Lucknow Police, who registered FIR No. 847 of 2023 against "unknown gravitational forces" under the petitioner's complaint. Sub-Inspector Yadav's affidavit (Annexure P-21) notes with evident frustration: "I have been a police officer for 22 years. I have never been asked to file an FIR against physics. The charge: indecent exposure. Sir, he was wearing a shirt."

10B. The petitioner also placed on record the testimony of Passport Officer Sunita Devi (Annexure P-22), who rejected the petitioner's passport photograph three times on the ground that the "face ratio to other features violates established norms." The petitioner was eventually issued a passport with a special notation: "Photograph taken with wide-angle lens under supervisory approval."[9]

10C. Municipal Clerk Savitri, Lucknow Property Tax Office, provided a written submission (Annexure P-23) confirming that an attempt was made to classify the petitioner's chest as "commercial property" for purposes of enhanced property tax. The proposal was withdrawn after the petitioner's counsel pointed out that the petitioner's chest does not have a separate PAN number. Municipal Clerk Savitri noted, however, that "each tit was briefly registered as separate property in the municipal database due to a clerical error."

10D. The affidavit of DGCA Officer Ashwin (Annexure P-24) established that the petitioner has been restricted to aisle seats on all domestic flights, as "window seat occupancy constitutes a flight hazard." Officer Ashwin further testified that the petitioner's check-in process now requires advance notification to the airline, the airport authority, and — following the Narita incident — the meteorological department of the destination country.[10]

IV. Submissions of the Respondent

11. The learned Attorney General, appearing for the Union of India (and, by extension, Gravity), opposed the petition with characteristic brevity. His primary submission was as follows:

12. The Attorney General further submitted that the petitioner's condition, while sympathetically noted, is a matter of biology and not a matter of law. He pointed out that:

13. When pressed by Justice Boobesh on whether the Government had any duty of care toward citizens disproportionately affected by natural forces, the Attorney General replied: "My Lord, if we start compensating people for gravity, we will also have to compensate bald men for UV radiation. There is no end."

V. Analysis & Discussion

14. This Court has given anxious consideration to the submissions of both sides. We have examined the voluminous record, including the AIIMS medical reports, the IIT Moob-bay research paper, the 47 CISF incident reports, the affidavit of Munna the Tailor, the Mother Dairy feasibility study (Annexure P-19, filed without the petitioner's consent and subsequently expunged, though this Court notes with some alarm its finding that the petitioner's mammary region is "commercially viable"), and the photographic evidence (which this Court examined in camera, in the interests of both decency and structural analysis).

15. There is no doubt in our minds that the petitioner suffers genuine physical and social hardship as a result of his condition. The evidence is, if anything, overwhelming — both in quality and in sheer mass. The Court records its sympathy.

16. However, sympathy, however deep, cannot substitute for legal principle. The central question before this Court is whether Gravity — a fundamental force of nature, operating uniformly across the universe since approximately 13.8 billion years ago — can be held legally liable for its effects on one citizen's chest.

17. We hold that it cannot. The reasons are as follows:

18. We are not unmoved by the petitioner's invocation of the Census case (Census Bureau v. Jindal, 2019 Del HC 2234), wherein the Delhi High Court memorably ruled: "One man, two tits, one vote." That case, however, concerned the right to be counted as a single electoral entity, and does not bear upon the question of tortious liability of natural forces. Although we note that the phrase has since entered the popular legal lexicon in ways its author surely did not intend.

VI. Concurring Opinion of Justice Boobesh

19. Per Justice A.K. Boobesh (concurring): I concur with the majority but write separately because this case has weighed on me — no pun intended — more heavily than most.

20. The petitioner's suffering is real. I have reviewed the photographic evidence, the medical reports, and the deeply moving affidavit of Munna the Tailor, which I believe should be prescribed reading in every law school in this country. The image of a man whose measuring tape "cried" is not easily forgotten.

21. I am sympathetic. I am, if I may say so, the most sympathetic person on this Bench. My very name — a coincidence I did not choose — has made this case feel oddly personal.

22. Nevertheless, the law is the law. Gravity is a fundamental force. It has been pulling things down since long before this Court was constituted, and it will continue to do so long after we are gone. It does not answer to writs. It does not respect interim orders. It is, in the most literal sense, above the law — or rather, it is the law, just not the kind we are empowered to adjudicate.

23. I would, however, obiter dicta, direct the Union of India to consider the following:

24. These are recommendations, not directions. But I make them in the hope that the Executive will demonstrate the compassion that the Judiciary, bound by legal principle, cannot.

VII. Order

25. The petitioner is at liberty to pursue such medical, sartorial, or architectural remedies as may be available to him. The Court records its genuine sympathy and wishes the petitioner well in his ongoing negotiations with the laws of physics.

26. All pending applications, if any, stand disposed of. The Registry is directed to return the photographic evidence in sealed cover to the petitioner at the earliest, before it causes further distraction to the Court staff.