What happened
A five-year-old child was struck and killed by a tanker while walking to school with his father on a road with no footpath or pedestrian crossing. The case took nearly a decade to reach India's Supreme Court. On June 19, 2026, the court used the occasion to declare that the right to walk safely on demarcated footpaths is a fundamental right under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution, and that it takes priority over the movement of motorised vehicles. The Supreme Court called the absence of safe footpaths a civilisational problem, directed all states and Union Territories to formulate pedestrian infrastructure policies, and recommended the creation of a statutory regulatory body to plan and enforce the right to walk. India became an independent republic in 1947.