The day a judge landed in a police lock-up

 

One morning in 1960, a man with a towel around his prominently large bald head was stopped by two constables on bicycles at the Seremban Lake Gardens and locked up. He turned out to be the High Court judge. (Seremban City Council pic)

PETALING JAYA: Have you heard of a judge who ended in a police lock-up? It happened in Seremban in 1960, and the judge involved was the late Justice N Sharma, an insomniac.

Sharma was the High Court judge for Negeri Sembilan and Melaka at the time, based in Melaka as Seremban did not have judges’ quarters.

He would travel from Melaka on a Sunday and take a room at the Seremban Rest House adjoining the Lake Gardens.

The tale of his arrest is related in the book Summum Bonum (The Ultimate Good), by retired Court of Appeal judge Mahadev Shankar.

The 408-page book presents Mahadev Shankar’s life, experiences and reflections in the form of stories.

An insomniac, Sharma decided to go for a walk one Monday morning at about 4.30. “Because it was so early and hardly a soul was stirring”, Sharma decided that he would not change his clothes for the morning stroll.

He was already wearing a round neck singlet, a pair of shorts and canvas shoes. As it was chilly, he wrapped a towel around his head, which Shankar described as being prominently large and bald. He took a walking stick (presumably to ward off any dogs) and off he went, striding along the road to the Lake Gardens.

On the way, he was stopped by two constables on bicycles, who demanded that he show his identity card. “He became annoyed and they refused to accept that he was a judge. He yelled, ‘You siapa?’ (Who do you think you are),” Shankar wrote.

Sharma tried to explain that he was a judge but the policemen were not convinced, and that made him angry and he called them “bodoh” (stupid). “By this time the constables were convinced that he was demented, and since he was not carrying any document, they took him to the police station and locked him up,” said Shankar,

Mahadev Shankar at his book launch on Jan 15.

At 8am, Stanley Ponniah, a lawyer in the town, went to the police station to bail out one of his clients and while he was at the counter, Sharma, who was in his cell, saw him and yelled for help.

Ponniah asked the judge: “What are you doing in the lock-up?” An exasperated Sharma replied: “Tell these bloody fools that I am the judge and get me out of here.”

Ponniah told one of the constables that Sharma was a judge and procured his release from the cell. The constable who had detained Sharma apologised profusely and saluted him.

Sharma asked Ponniah to take him back to the Rest House immediately and told Ponniah to keep the matter under his hat, “but by the time I got to my office in Kuala Lumpur at 9.15am that same morning, despite there not being mobile phones and social media, the story had gone viral!”

Sharma, a lawyer from Ipoh wrote some landmark judgements in civil and criminal law.

The book Summun Bonum contains the recollections of appeals judge Shankar who served on the bench for 14 years until his retirement in 1997. He was a lawyer in Seremban for three years until he returned to Kuala Lumpur in 1959.

The 408-page book has been collated and edited by lawyer Santhi Latha and presents Shankar’s life, experiences and reflections in the form of stories that are absorbing, some even tantalising, as readers travel with the author from early Malaya until his elevation as a judge and after retirement. - FMT