Chikkamagaluru, Aug 9: Acclaimed legal scholar, intellectual property rights activist and public interest litigator Shamnad Basheer passed away on Thursday in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district under mysterious circumstances. He was 43.
The body of Prof Basheer, who played an important role in reforming legal education in the country, was found by police in a field on the outskirts of Chikkamagaluru city following an intense manhunt on Thursday morning.
Sources said he was missing for three to four days, although the police were informed of it only on Thursday.
Chikkamagaluru Superintendent of Police Harish Pandey said Basheer’s body was found in his Skoda SUV which was parked in an open area, 300 metres from the road. There was no apparent cause of death though the state of the body suggested asphyxiation.
“The key was in the ignition, the doors were locked from inside and the heater was on. When we broke open a door, we found an electrical discharge running along the doors and the floorboards. It is possible that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning but we won’t know the facts until the postmortem on Friday,” Pandey said.
Born on May 14, 1976, Basheer joined an intellectual property law firm in New Delhi following his graduation from NLSIU, before moving to Oxford, where he attained a Bachelors in Civil Law (as a Shell Centenary Scholar) and a Master of Philosophy with distinction.
He earned fame for his intervention in a landmark case, including the Pharma giant Novartis.
But his greatest achievement, according to many, was his formation of Increased Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education (IDIA). The NGO works to make legal education accessible to poor students.
With countless feathers in his cap, Basheer had been a champion for some of the most underrepresented legal fields in the country.
In 2012, when he was the Ministry of Human Resources and Development’s chair professor for intellectual property, Basheer led a first-of-its-kind academic intervention in the landmark Novartis-Gleevec patent hearing at the Supreme Court.
Swiss drug maker Novartis had approached the Supreme Court after having been turned down a patent for the cancer medicine Gleevec which is sold by generic drug makers in India at a very low price, Legally India had reported then. Novartis was attempting to sell it at a distinct twentyfold markup.
Basheer, as academic intervenor-amicus, had argued before a two-judge bench on the case which resulted in the apex court not allowing Novartis its patent in India.
Basheer, who taught at several of the top law universities in the country, was the only Indian to have been appointed to the intellectual property global advisory council of the World Economic Forum.
In 2014, Basheer was awarded the Infosys Science Foundation Prize for his contribution to the field of research in humanities.
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