KAJAL CHATTERJEE, KOLKATA
Let us go through the real story set in Bihar, resembling anticlimax of a cinema where a benevolent judge emerges from nowhere when a child protagonist and the viewers were expecting the worst. Fatherless and with an unhealed fractured leg and visionless right eye (both due to lack of medical care), a 16-year-old hungry boy from the poorest of the poor family, somehow persisting through petty jobs and further cornered economically, thanks to the lockdown, steals a woman’s purse to save his mentally-disturbed mother and 12-year-old brother from sinking towards inevitable death due to continued hunger. Far from prosecuting the boy for the theft by remaining blindly devoted to the rule book and various sections, Chief Judicial Magistrate Manvendra Mishra not only freed him as innocent; Judge Mishra also made arrangements for purchasing food grains, vegetables and clothes for the poor family with his own money and directed the local administration to ensure that the family did not go hungry in future and also received the benefits of all welfare schemes. Indeed a lot of lessons can be learnt from this real humanitarian story. Judge Mishra has clearly conveyed through his verdict that application of mind, heart and conscience is much more important than mechanical reading of the law book and the relevant sections. Also, he has proved that rule of humanity is infinite times more important than rules inscribed in books. Hope all judges, especially when the cases deal with poor vulnerable hapless people, exercise this rule of humanity and deliver verdicts laced with compassion by taking into account the exact circumstance that compelled the accused to commit ‘unlawful’ act.
