High Court advocate writes book on unwritten laws

The Hindu: Madurai: Sunday, August 30, 2015.

Madras High Court Bench advocate I. Robert Chandrakumar, son of former tea plantation workers at the infamous Manjolai estate in Tirunelveli district, has come out with his second Tamil book titled ‘Unwritten Laws’ consisting of essays touching upon various socio-legal issues.

His first book ‘Law and the Layman’ was released in 2012 and its second edition rolled out last year. The latest book published by Uyirmmai Pathippagam deals with many significant issues, including the absence of a law or statutory provision till date mandating police to trace out missing persons.

The author claims that it is a matter of common knowledge that though the entire State machinery would be pressed into service to find out people missing from families of influential people in the society, the police seldom show the same kind of interest in case of others due to absence of a statutory obligation. He also impresses upon the need to abolish death penalty in the country, demands reintroduction of telegraph system and stresses the need to amend the Right to Information Act, 2005 for ensuring that those who threaten or harm RTI activists could be prosecuted and imposed with stringent punishment.

One of the essays in the book highlights the importance of establishing Benches of the Supreme Court in Delhi, Maharashtra, Calcutta and Tamil Nadu to ensure that economically poor litigants were not deprived of their statutory right to prefer appeals before the Supreme Court for want of money.