In an uncommon step, the Kerala police registered a case after a microphone howled during Chief Minister (CM) Pinarayi Vijayan’s speech at a condolence meeting for former CM Oommen Chandy on July 26.
The police registered a suo motu case following the incident. The mic malfunctioned seconds after Vijayan started his speech at the event organised by the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee in Thiruvananthapuram. However, the officials have not implicated anyone and only seized the mic and the amplifier. No formal complaint was received in the incident.
Meanwhile, mic owner Renjith said that when the chief minister came to speak, photographers and other media members rushed forward. One of their bags accidentally hit the amplifier, causing the disturbance. The technician was unable to get through the crowd and access the console. But he managed to reach there within 10 seconds and fixed the problem. “This is a common occurrence at events like this,” Renjith said. He was shocked to learn that a case had been registered in his name for this. Luckily, a day later, the police withdrew the case on the intervention of the CM.
A senior police officer reportedly said: “No complaint was received about the malfunctioning of the microphone, but the case was registered as per instructions from the higher-ups.” He said that the case was registered as scientific analysis would be prepared only if the request was presented along with the case number. He also said that there was no need to create a controversy in the matter.
The Opposition was up in arms over this matter. The Leader of the Opposition, VD Satheesan, reportedly said: “Are you guys joking, Kerala police? You got to be proud that Kerala police is the first force in the world to file a case against a ‘Mic’ suo motu. Of course, it’s a gravest violation of public order if a 10-sec technical glitch happens in the mic when Pinarayi Vijayan is speaking.”
Such hilarious cases against non-living things are not new. Even in the US some inanimate objects ended up as defendants in court. In 2002, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) seized a US vessel transporting shark fins to Guatemala. The vessel, King Diamond II, had been contracted by Hong Kong-based Tai Loong Hong Marine Products, Ltd (TLH) to pick up some shark fins from fishing vessels on the high seas and ship them to Guatemala, where they were to be sold.
In court, the USCG argued that the ship violated the Shark Finning Prohibition Act, which forbade the sale of shark fins. The government initially named the ship as the defendant, but later switched to naming the shark fins. The government argued that the King Diamond II qualified as a fishing vessel as it had aided another fishing vessel at sea. That made sense with the district court, which ruled that TLH forfeit the fins to the government.
TLH appealed the decision. It argued that the ship was not a fishing vessel, since it never assisted any fishing boat. Rather, it purchased shark fins from a fishing vessel. In 2008, the Court of Appeals sided with TLH, stating that the Magnuson Act that covered the Shark Finning Prohibition Act did not clearly explain what constituted a fishing vessel. And as the Act never forbade the buying of shark fins, TLH had done nothing wrong.
In 1971, the US government took legal action against 37 obscene photographs that were brought into the country by Milton Luros on October 24, 1969. US Customs seized the photographs since they ran afoul of the law banning the importation of pornographic material. Luros argued that the pictures were not pornographic material. While they could be classified as obscene, he only planned on adding them into a book detailing different sex positions. The court determined that the law banning the importation of obscene materials was unconstitutional and ruled that Customs return the photographs to Luros.
Unlike aforesaid cases, sometimes giving legal status to a non-living entity as a natural person is important. For instance, corporations, despite not being individual human beings, are legal persons and have the same rights and responsibilities as all persons do. A corporation can own property and can sue or be sued, can exercise human rights against real individuals and can be responsible for human rights violations. Corporations can be convicted of criminal offenses. However, with all the rights mentioned, they are not considered living entities the way humans are.
Corporations have been given far more rights than animals and in certain cases enjoy even more rights than human beings. Animals and nature, on the other hand, are still treated like things. Nature is misused, littered, bought and sold as property without anyone caring about its interest.
It wasn’t long ago that humans were treated like “things”, something that could be bought and sold in the market. Black slaves in Colonial America were valued against crops, oxen, pigs and chickens.
Last year, the Madras High Court ruled that Mother Nature had the same legal status as a human being, which includes all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities. The Court observed that the natural environment is part of the human right to life, and that humans have an environmental duty to future generations. “The past generations have handed over the ‘Mother Earth’ to us in its pristine glory and we are morally bound to hand over the same Mother Earth to the next generation,” Justice S Srimathy emphasised.
Recently, the New Zealand parliament passed a legislation that declared the “Whangagui” River to be a “legal person” with all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities that any other New Zealand resident might have.
In another case in India, the Supreme Court in July 2017 stayed the order of the Uttarakhand High Court recognizing the rivers Ganga and Yamuna as “living entities”. The Uttarakhand government had taken the issue to the top court, arguing that the declaration was legally unsustainable.
—By Abhilash Kumar Singh and India Legal Bureau