SOMETIMES, people do not realise the impact their actions have on others, be it good or bad. However, the people you have been kind to will remember what you have done for them and may take inspiration from it.
A criminal lawyer had shared what he considered to be a memory he will never forget in his 31 year-long career, reminiscing a shoplifting case he worked on in 1998 of a woman who stole a pencil box from a supermarket for her son.
“I was in court, sitting by myself. Later on, a woman was brought in handcuffs so I got up and asked her, ‘Madam, what is the (matter)?’
“And then she said she stole (something) so I asked her why did she steal and she told me that she made a promise to her child that if he got number one in class, (she) will give him a pencil box,” Ahmad Zaharil Muhaiyar narrated in his TikTok video.
The lawyer then asked the young mother how much the pencil box cost, which she said was around RM18, complete with a full stationery set. The woman also mentioned that she wanted to fulfill her promise of getting her child the pencil case after finding out he ranked number one in class.
“My child was constantly asking me to get the pencil box, so I stole it as I did not have enough money at the time,” Ahmad said, recalling what the young mother said to him.
Ahmad was touched at hearing her story and decided to work on the case. First, he was told by the magistrate to go to the child’s school located in Sentul to corroborate the woman’s story.
After finally confirming that the boy did earn his top ranking through solid evidence from his report card, Ahmad asked the school principal to testify in court regarding the shoplifting case and the principal agreed to do so.
The Star reported that the supermarket owner was also present at court and still insisted on proceeding with the case despite Ahmad’s offer of compensating the owner double the price of the pencil box, in an attempt to get him to “have mercy” on the young mother.
Working pro-bono for the young mother at the time, he displayed the evidence in court and after much consideration, the magistrate agreed to discharge the mother after binding her for a year based on a good behaviour bond.
Fast forward several years, Ahmad was approached by a young lawyer who happened to be the son of the woman he defended in the shoplifting case all those years ago.
“He told me, ‘my mom sends her regards to you’ and I said ‘who is your mom?’,” he asked the young lawyer.
“You may not remember, sir but I am the child that wanted the pencil box and I’m a lawyer (now), sir,” said the woman’s son to Ahmad.
Hearing this, tears streamed down the criminal lawyer’s face, taken aback by how his legal contributions turned the young boy who just wanted a pencil box, into a promising young lawyer.
“Because I helped her, her child became a lawyer and I always meet up with him. So that memory is something I will never forget till the day I die,” he concluded in his video.
Netizens were quite touched at the inspiring and heartwarming story of how the lawyer’s efforts to help out a struggling mother turned out to “reward” him in the most unexpected way.
