Editorial : Equality before the law

The horror stories are coming out only now.   Well, that’s not entirely correct for he was implicated in a rule-bending, which compromised the most basic principle of equality when he arranged for a VVIP’s son to enjoy special privileges at an exam.  What lawyers and law students probably knew all along is now falling into the public domain.  
 

In 1997 he declined to allow someone to take oaths as a lawyer because there was a small error in the application form.  The boy had to wait an extra year. That is not the point.  His mother was dying of cancer and he just wanted to give her one reason to smile.  She passed away one week after that year’s oath-taking ceremony.  
 

A rule is a rule is a rule.  It’s not about mothers and fathers, parents and sons.  Accepted.  But this man has since bent rules left and right and even created some of his own to turn his son into a lawyer.  If only it was just that!  Not only has he interfered in results, he appears to have ensured that his son, who had failed LLB examinations repeatedly and entered Law College from an institute through a clause-convenient inserted into admission rules by the father, would secure the highest marks in the first year exams.  Now there are ‘late bloomers’ of course, but when this particular bloomer is awarded a ‘special prize’ even before he is a candidate of any Law College exam, to say there’s something fishy would be an understatement.  
 

They say that justice must be done and also appear to be done.  The man must have uttered those words countless times as he lectured on right and wrong.  
 

On the one hand one might conclude ‘there’s no reason to be surprised, he bent rules for the highest in the land, so anyone less is ‘fair game’.  Then again, are we to believe that lawyers and law students were ignorant of these transgressions?  Why is it that there was a hue and a cry in the clear transgression of the principle of equality in one instance and silence while this individual repeatedly favoured his son?  Is it that nepotism has obtained overall social sanction?  
 

Most distressing is the fact that we are talking about an educationist here and moreover a teacher who is in charge of the premier institution that trains people to distinguish right from wrong, just from unjust, the concept called ‘conflict of interest’ and so on.    What did those students who were witness to all this learn?  What have those who have passed through the portals of the Law College learnt that stopped them from crying foul?  What does all this say about the future of justice in this country, the future the law and its interpretation as it concerns ordinary people?  
 

The jury is not out here.  It is in session.  We await the verdict.