“Today, however, we have been called upon to the respond to the desperate purrs of three felines...”
So reads the judgement of Justice Nambiar of the Kerala High Court, who allowed N Prakash, a resident of Cochi, to avail a vehicle pass to buy biscuits for his pet cats.
The grit of the cat owner was matched by the wit and heart of the Kerala HC judge. Here's the story.
For Want of Me-O Biscuits
N Prakash, a cat owner in Cochi needed to buy biscuits for his cats. He approached the local police for a vehicle pass, so he could buy a pack, that would last him for the rest of the cats.
The police, as one would have it, refused.
Unfazed, Prakash moved the Kerala High Court. While this might seem completely over-the-top to the layman, Prakash had his reasons.
The Valid Petition
Over teleconferencing, Prakash pleaded his case at the Kerala High court. His argument, as Justice Nambiar put it down in his judgement;
“...he submits that, as a pure vegetarian, he does not cook non-vegetarian food in his house and, over the years, his cats have been fed with the above biscuits and they cannot do without them. He states that one packet of 7 kilograms of “Meo-Persian biscuits” would see his feline friends through the rest of the lockdown period, and that the said biscuits are available for purchase at the Cochin Pet Hospital that is some distane away from his home. His request for an online pass was, however, rejected by the police authorities without assigning any reasons.”
Long story short, Prakash needed the biscuits to feed his cats, since he was a pure vegetarian and his cats ate the meat-based biscuits.
Justice (Nambiar) Served...The Biscuits
After a succinct elucidation of the country's legal position on animal rights, Justice Nambiar directed the police to grant Prakash a vehicle pass to go buy the biscuits for his cats.
What hit the spot, the funny bone and activated Twitter's warm-fuzzy mode was the manner in which he concluded the judgement;
Before parting with the case, we might observe, on a lighter vein, that while we are happy to have come to the aid of the felines in this case, we are also certain that our directions will avert a “CATastrophe” in the petitioner’s home.
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