India, Oct. 10 -- The Orissa high court has likened the bureaucratic ordeal faced by an RTI applicant to Franz Kafka's book 'The Trial', calling out "officialdom and red tapism" that turned the citizen's quest for information into a nightmarish exercise.

Justice V Narasingh, in a judgment delivered on Thursday, quashed the February 2024 order of the State Information Commissioner that dismissed the second appeal of Bhadrak resident Hemanta Nayak, who had been seeking details on alleged encroachment of government land in his village since 2018.

In an unusually strong language, justice Narasingh drew a parallel between the petitioner's seven-year struggle for a simple reply and Kafka's tormented protagonist Josef K, trapped in a senseless...