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Showing posts from September, 2025

Justice Above the Law: Lessons from Agraba for Today's Society...

In the desert kingdom of Agraba, laws were rigid and punishments severe. For theft, even something as small as an apple could cost a person his hand. One day, a starving boy barely twelve, named Kamil, stole an apple after going without food for three days. The shopkeeper caught him. The crowd mocked him. The royal guards dragged him before Sultan Quasim Ali, the ruler, who ordered: "For theft, cut his hand." The boy stood frozen, tears in his eyes. Just as the sentence was about to be carried out, Minister Musa Rashid, wise beyond his years, intervened:  "Majesty, the law may demand his hand—but justice demands we ask why his stomach was empty. If the child must steal to survive, it is not his shame but ours. The greater crime is not theft of fruit, but theft of compassion from the hearts of men. Punishment may satisfy the law—but mercy redeems the kingdom." The court fell silent. The Sultan's gold-adorned hand, raised in judgment, trembled before l...

India's Judgement access problem : Why private commercial reporters still beat Supreme Court Online...

In 2025, a nation boasting digital public goods like Aadhaar and UPI is still shackled by a colonial relic :  Private / Commercial law reporters get judgements faster than litigants themselves. All India Reporter and SCC are not villains in this story; they're simply exploiting inefficiencies baked into the judicial bloodstream. The real scandal is that the State tolerates a system where access to law, the very foundation of rights, is rationed through backdoors and paywalls. How does it work ? Court correspondents and accredited reporters hover in courtrooms, collecting draft judgments or copies from court staff before the official machinery bothers to upload them. Parties to the case, ordinary citizens, wait days or weeks for certified copies. Why? Because understaffed registries shuffle paper bundles, clerks vanish on leave, and digitization crawls along like a colonial scribe with ink and quill. This isn't a scam in the traditional sense. Bribes aren't the e...