Justice Bhagwati Prasad Banerjee, retired Calcutta High Court judge and noise crusader, died early on Thursday. He was 79.

The former judge had a bout of pneumonia in July and was admitted to hospital on August 21 with dengue.

He had turned the green movement in Bengal and in other states on its head with his series of pioneering noise judgments in the late 1990s.

Justice Banerjee had on April 1, 1996, ruled that "nobody can be made captive listener (and) everybody has the fundamental right of not to hear" while adjudicating on a petition filed by Om Birangana Society, which had moved court when police did not allow its members to play songs in the open.

Subsequently, all rules (state as well as central) about using loudspeakers and bursting firecrackers were based on the templates of Justice Banerjee's rulings.

His orders became part of the judicial curricula in many countries. "Foreigners call me a sound judge; not because I am very wise but for my orders about sound pollution, which they have used to upgrade their noise norms," the former judge had shared with The Telegraph recently.

He became chairperson of the first-of-its-kind non-official fact-finding commission set up by Sabuj Mancha, a platform of organisations working to protect the environment.

"The state's green movement should always be indebted to him as he had almost single-handedly catapulted its concerns, particularly those related to noise pollution, through his orders," said Gitanath Ganguly, advocate and an old friend of Justice Banerjee.

Biswajit Mukherjee, former chief law officer of the state pollution control board, said the board could play a significant role in controlling noise pollution in the 1990s and early 2000s only because of Justice Banerjee's support.

Naba Dutta of Sabuj Mancha said: "He participated in preparing a noise report for us about a month ago.... He said the state's chequered history in controlling noise pollution should not be compromised under any circumstance."