The magistrate at the district magistrate's court at the Esplanade court house in South Mumbai announced today that a Banyan tree outside the premises of the court house would be used as legal aid for arrested terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman Kasab since all the lawyers of the city have refused to take up his case on ethical grounds. On December 5th, a resolution was passed unanimously by the Bombay Metropolitan Magistrate Court's Bar Association, which has more than 1,000 members, saying that none of its members will defend any of the accused of the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.
The honourable magistrate said that since under the constitution, the trial cannot proceed unless the accused is provided legal aid, he had no other option but to appoint a tree to represent the accused terrorist in the court.
"I cannot force any lawyer to take up his case, can I? Any person who would dare to represent this man would be branded as a terrorist sympathizer and in all probability be lynched to death by an angry mob"
The judge revealed that at one point of time he had decided to appoint some animal to represent Kasab, but the news leaked out and he received threatening phone calls from angry activists of PETA who threatened to stage a dharna outside the court if any "poor and innocent" animal was forcibly used to legally represent the "butcher of Faridkot" who unleashed terror in the precincts of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai.
"Fortunately, the quaint old Hindu traditions of marrying a tree to ward off evil influences came to the rescue. If a banyan tree can be used to save a bride from becoming a widow, why can't it be used to save some lawyer from becoming dead meat at the hands of a furious mob?"
But the news that a banyan tree would be used as a stand-in for a lawyer has not gone well with environmentalists and tree-huggers. 'People for Trees' a NGO dedicated to the task of increasing green cover in Mumbai issued a statement decrying the decision to use a tree to represent Kasab.
"Trees are alive and have feelings too like humans. Just because we can't hear plants or trees expressing their thoughts and feelings does not give us the right to use them for nefarious purposes such as defending evil terrorists and exposing them to the fury of angry mumbaikars who might burn or chop the chosen tree in disgust. The banyan tree outside the court house too has a right to life and should not be exposed to any dangerous situation that might arise out of the decision by the magistrate to use it as legal aid for Kasab" said the statement denouncing the court's decision.
We decided to interview the spirit of the banyan tree at the center of the controversy using the services of a shaman trained in the art of communicating with nature spirits. The banyan tree expressing his views through shaman's tongue said that he had no misgivings or doubts about representing the terrorist responsible for the death of hundreds of mumbaikars.
"I think its a great honor for me and for the entire plant kingdom that I should become the first tree ever to replace a professional lawyer. After all in the history of mankind, millions of people have been massacred, butchered, burnt alive and even eaten by fellow humans. Yet at no time in history have lawyers refused to defend brutes responsible for such horrors. Even child-eating monsters of Noida got legal defence who unscrupulously used every trick in the books to get them exonerated. If this case represents a turning point in the history of mankind, I feel proud to be part of such a historic trial"
Meanwhile, after Muslim organisations refused to give burial at their cemeteries to the nine terrorists who were gunned down by security forces, cops decided to dump all the bodies in the Arabian sea off the coast of Mumbai. "It is very appropriate that these m@%c^##''s should be thrown back into the same seas that they used as a route to invade our city" said Ramakant Pandey, DCP, Mumbai South.
According to some reports filed by fishermen, the sharks swimming in the high seas, who like the rest of their clan have no qualms in eating their own babies, have refused to eat the dead bodies of the nine terrorists.
