BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 1 English 1 2024-25 - ATKT Set 2 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

The chemist is Thomas Groffin, and the text is Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, in the chapter describing the trial of Bardell against Pickwick.

He is one of the special jurymen. Asked to be sworn, he begs to be excused because he has no assistant in his shop; Mr Justice Stareleigh tells him he should hire one, and when Groffin says he cannot afford it, the judge retorts that he ought to be able to afford it. The quoted line is Groffin's reply.

The verdict was returned at the assize trial of Hetty Sorrel in George Eliot's Adam Bede, held at Stoniton.

Hetty was tried for child murder, the concealment and death of her newborn infant. After the evidence of Sarah Stone, who had sheltered her and seen the child alive, and of John Olding, who found the body hidden under wood chippings, the jury returned this verdict, and sentence of death was passed. Adam Bede was present in court to hear it.

The speaker is David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson, counsel for the accused Italian twins, addressing the court at the murder trial in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson.

The murderer is the man known as Tom Driscoll, the Judge's own nephew and heir, who killed him with an Indian knife while robbing him. His true identity is that he is Roxy's son, exchanged in the cradle as an infant by his mother, so that he is by the law of that place a slave; the man brought up as the slave Chambers is the real Tom Driscoll and the Judge's true heir.

Answer: Mr Richard requested me to wait there till he returned.

The changes made, and why:

Answer: The windows have been cleaned.

The changes made:

1. The object the windows becomes the subject, and being plural it takes have, not has.
2. The verb becomes have been cleaned: the present perfect of be, plus the past participle.
3. The by-phrase is dropped. "By someone" adds nothing, because an indefinite agent is exactly what the passive exists to leave out.

Who he is

John Franting is the victim in Arnold Bennett's short story "Murder!", and the man whose character supplies the motive for the crime. He is set in deliberate contrast with Lomax Harder, the mild poet who kills him.

His character

1. Physically formidable. Franting is an athlete: a dozen years earlier he had been perhaps the finest amateur boxer in England, and he bewildered his opponents by being left-handed. Bennett establishes his physical dominance as a fact about the man before it becomes a fact about the plot.

2. Brutal in temperament. He is a bully in his dealings and in his affections. It is his treatment of Emily, the woman both men care for, that gives Harder a motive, and Bennett does not ask the reader to like him.

3. Coarse and insensitive. Where Harder is refined and inward, Franting is loud, worldly and blunt. He has no interest in what Harder values and no capacity to understand a man like him.

Who Soapy is

Soapy is the homeless man at the centre of O. Henry's story "The Cop and the Anthem", sitting on his bench in Madison Square as winter comes to New York, with three months' lodging to arrange.

How O. Henry presents him

1. Through his plan, not his past. We learn almost nothing of his history until the end. He is defined by what he decides to do: get himself arrested, so that Blackwell's Island will house him for the winter.

2. As a man with a code. He refuses the charity of the shelters and missions, where a bed is paid for with "humiliation of the spirit": questions about his private life, a bath, a sermon. Prison asks nothing of his self-respect. This is the key to the character. He is destitute but not servile, and the whole plot follows from the distinction.

7. Through the closing irony. At the moment of resolve a policeman arrests him for loitering, and the magistrate gives him three months. He obtains what he wanted only once he has stopped wanting it.

Comment

Soapy is built by an accumulation of small refusals: he refuses charity, refuses despair, refuses to be pitied. O. Henry's method is comic on the surface and critical underneath, and the criticism falls on the law rather than on the man. Five real offences pass unnoticed; one motionless, harmless man outside a church at night is arrested for how he looks.

3. Eloquent. The speech beginning "The quality of mercy is not strain'd" is among the most admired in Shakespeare, and it is not decoration: she offers Shylock a way out before she closes the trap.

4. Fair in form, and merciless in effect. She gives Shylock every opportunity, repeatedly invites him to take three times the money, confirms that the bond is good and that the law allows him his forfeit, and lets the case run to the point where Antonio's shirt is open and the knife is ready. Only then does she produce the reservation.

5. Resourceful and playful. The ring trick that follows the trial shows the same intelligence turned to comedy: she takes Bassanio's ring as her fee and afterwards convicts him of parting with it.

6. Constrained, for all her power. She is bound by her dead father's will to marry whoever chooses the right casket, and can neither choose nor refuse. The woman who out-argues the Court of Venice cannot dispose of her own hand, and Shakespeare puts the two facts side by side deliberately.

The occasion

Plato's Apology records the trial of Socrates at Athens in 399 B.C. After his conviction and the sentence of death, he addresses the court, and it is there that he sets out what he thinks about dying.

His view, in five steps

1. To fear death is to pretend to a knowledge one does not have. Nobody knows whether death is a good or an evil, and to fear it is to think oneself wise about what one does not know. This is the same ignorance he has spent his life exposing in others, and he refuses to commit it himself.

2. He fears doing wrong far more than dying. He tells the court that he will not abandon his questioning to save his life, because to disobey what he believes to be right, out of fear, would be a certain evil, while death may be no evil at all.

I am a first-year student of the five-year B.L.S. LL.B. course at ____ Law College, Mumbai. My coursework in Legal Method, Legal Language and Economics has given me a grounding in legal research, drafting and case analysis, and I have completed a certificate course in legal writing. I am familiar with SCC Online and Manupatra, and I have taken part in two intra-collegiate moot court competitions, reaching the semi-final in the second.

I am particularly interested in your firm's civil and commercial litigation practice, and I would be glad to assist with research, case briefs, indexing and any drafting entrusted to me under supervision. I am available for six weeks from 1 May 2025 and can attend court with your juniors as required.

My bio-data is enclosed. I would welcome the opportunity of an interview at your convenience.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,
Rohan Kulkarni

Encl.: Bio-data

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Model answer

Rohan Kulkarni
22, Green Meadows, Andheri (East)
Mumbai 400069
+91 98XXXXXX36 | rohan.kulkarni@email.com

8 April 2025

The Municipal Commissioner
Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
Mahapalika Marg, Fort, Mumbai 400001

Subject: Repeated failure of electricity supply and non-working street lights, Green Meadows and adjoining buildings, Andheri (East)

Sir/Madam,

I write on behalf of the residents of Green Meadows and the three adjoining buildings on Marol Church Road to bring to your notice the repeated failure of electricity supply in our locality, and to request your intervention.

I therefore request that:

1. the ward electrical department inspect the locality and secure the open feeder pillar at once, as it is a present danger;
2. the eleven street lights on Marol Church Road be restored, this being a municipal responsibility;
3. the matter be taken up with the licensee supplying this area, and the residents be informed in writing of the cause of the failures and the steps taken.

Reliable electricity and lit public streets are basic to the safety of a residential area, and the residents would be grateful for your early intervention. I shall gladly accompany your officers on inspection at any time convenient to them.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,
Rohan Kulkarni
(Secretary, Green Meadows Co-operative Housing Society)

Copy to: The Assistant Commissioner, K/East Ward; the Nodal Officer of the supply licensee.

What the question is asking

Women's empowerment is the process by which women acquire the capacity and the freedom to make choices about their own lives and to act on them: over education, work, money, marriage, childbearing, movement and political voice. The question sets up a straight opposition, and the honest answer refuses it: in India today empowerment is a reality in law and largely a myth in daily life, and the gap between the two is the subject of the essay.

The case for calling it a reality

1. Education. The gap in school enrolment between girls and boys has closed almost entirely at the primary level, and women now outnumber men in many university courses in India, including law.

2. Political representation. Reservation of one-third of seats in Panchayats and Municipalities under the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments has put more than a million women into elected office, and several States have raised it to fifty per cent. The Women's Reservation Act, 2023 provides for one-third reservation in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies.

The case for calling it a myth

1. Female labour force participation is low and has, on some measures, fallen. It is the single most stubborn statistic in the field. 2. Unpaid work. Women do the overwhelming share of housework and care, which is neither counted in national income nor shared. 3. Safety. Violence at home and harassment in public remain widespread, and conviction rates are low. 4. Son preference persists despite the PCPNDT Act, 1994. 5. Representation at the top of business, the judiciary and the senior bar remains thin, even where entry-level numbers are equal. 6. Law outruns practice. A right a woman cannot enforce without money, time and family support is a right on paper.

Conclusion

Empowerment in India is therefore neither a myth nor an accomplished reality, but an unfinished process. The formal half is largely done; what remains is the harder half, because it depends on changing households rather than statutes. To call it a myth is to insult the women who fought for the law that exists; to call it a reality is to stop before the work is finished.

3. A mandatory death sentence is unconstitutional. Mithu v. State of Punjab (1983) struck down a provision making death the only sentence, because it removed the court's power to consider the offender.

4. Aggravating and mitigating circumstances must both be weighed, including the age, background and possibility of reform of the offender, under Bachan Singh and Machhi Singh (1983).

5. Safeguards after sentence. Confirmation by the High Court, appeal to the Supreme Court, and the power of pardon of the President under Article 72 and of the Governor under Article 161. Inordinate delay in deciding a mercy petition is itself a ground for commutation (Shatrughan Chauhan, 2014).

The arguments for retention

1. Retribution proportionate to the crime, for offences the community regards as beyond any other answer. 2. Deterrence, the claim that the ultimate penalty prevents the ultimate crime. 3. Protection, since an executed offender cannot offend again. 4. Public confidence, the argument that a State which does not punish the worst crimes adequately invites private vengeance.

What she testifies to

1. That Hetty came to her house and was received. She describes the young woman's condition and the circumstances in which she took her in.

2. That a child was born alive. This is the first indispensable fact. Without proof that the infant lived, there is no death and no offence.

3. That she clothed the child in linen of her own making. Her sentence, which several sittings of this paper set as a quotation, is: "Those are the clothes. I made them myself and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born." She is identifying, in open court, a garment produced as an exhibit.

4. That the child was alive and in Hetty's keeping when she last saw them. She left them together, and in the morning both were gone.

Why the evidence is decisive

1. It supplies the element the prosecution could not otherwise prove. A concealed body proves concealment. Sarah Stone proves a living child, and the case becomes one of child murder rather than of a stillbirth hidden in shame.

The character of the witness, and why Eliot made her so

Sarah Stone is the one person in the novel who was kind to Hetty. She took in an exhausted stranger, sheltered her, and clothed her child in linen she had kept since her own last child was born. She now destroys her in the witness box by telling the plain truth and nothing else.

Eliot puts the two things together on purpose. A witness has no way to be kind. The oath admits of no degrees, and the person best placed to speak for Hetty is, for exactly that reason, the person whose evidence convicts her. Sarah Stone gives her account, as Eliot writes it, with visible reluctance and complete accuracy, and the effect on the reader is far worse than any hostile witness could produce.

Conclusion

Sarah Stone's testimony is the cornerstone of the prosecution: it establishes a live birth, identifies the clothing, and places the child in the prisoner's hands. It is credible because it is disinterested, unshakeable because it rests on the witness's own work, and unbearable because it comes from the only person who had shown the accused any mercy. Eliot uses it to show that a trial can be perfectly conducted and still be a tragedy.

The plea

Gandhi pleaded guilty to all the charges. He told the court that he would not ask for mercy or plead any extenuating circumstance, and that he had no desire to put the prosecution to proof. The trial therefore turned entirely on sentence, which is what makes it a set text: it is a trial in which the facts were admitted and the argument was about the law itself.

Gandhi's statement

He read a written statement, and its substance was as follows.

1. He accepted full responsibility. He described himself as the author of the articles and asked the court to hold him responsible for what had followed, including the disturbances, in preference to the men who had acted.

2. He accepted responsibility for the violence he had not intended. Of Chauri Chaura, where a mob burned a police station, and of the Bombay and Madras disorders, he said he had underestimated the forces of evil and that the violence was the price of his own miscalculation. "I wanted to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed."

6. He invited the maximum penalty. He told the court that the only course open to the judge was either to resign the office if he believed the system was good and Gandhi's activity injurious to the public, or, if he believed the law and the system were evil, to inflict on him the severest penalty. He was there, he said, to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appeared to him the highest duty of a citizen.

The judgment

Judge Broomfield's remarks are as famous as the statement, and an answer must quote them.

1. He acknowledged the position of the accused. He said that it would be impossible to ignore the fact that Gandhi was "in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely to have to try", and that even those who differed from him in politics looked upon him as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life.

2. He stated the limits of his own office. It was his duty, he said, to judge the accused as a subject of the State, owing allegiance to it, and he could not take those matters into account beyond what the law allowed.

Assessment

The Great Trial is studied because both men behaved impeccably and the outcome was still unjust. Gandhi refused every device available to an accused: he did not deny authorship, did not challenge the evidence, did not plead in mitigation, and did not ask for mercy. Broomfield, for his part, was courteous, gave the accused every latitude, and applied a law he was bound to apply. The injustice lay in the law, not in the conduct of the court, and each of them said so from his own side.

Conclusion

The trial is the clearest illustration on this syllabus of the difference between legality and justice. Section 124A was validly enacted, the articles were plainly within it, the plea was voluntary, the sentence was within the maximum and was measured against precedent. Every step was lawful. And the proceeding is remembered as an indictment of the Government that brought it, because Gandhi turned the dock into a place from which to try the law, and the judge, in his last sentence, all but agreed with him.

The evidence, such as it is

1. Two notes, produced as love letters. The first: "Dear Mrs B., Chops and Tomata sauce. Yours, Pickwick." The second: "Dear Mrs B., I shall not be at home till to-morrow. Slow coach... Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan." Buzfuz treats the absence of any endearment as proof of a settled understanding and finds sinister meaning in the chops and the warming-pan.

2. Mrs Cluppins, who admits she overheard the conversation from outside the door, having stopped to listen, and whose account is consistent with a proposal only if one already believes there was one.

3. The judge does not judge. Mr Justice Stareleigh is deaf, irritable and chiefly anxious to finish. He mishears names, muddles Winkle's evidence, notes down what suits him, and reserves his energy for the dignity of his court, remarking that had the disturber been pointed out, "I would have committed him instantly." He never restrains Buzfuz once. An inattentive judge, in a system that relies on the bench to hold counsel to the evidence, is nearly as damaging as a corrupt one.

4. The jury is empanelled without regard to what it costs them. Groffin the chemist asks to be excused because his shop is in the hands of an errand-boy who confuses Epsom salts with oxalic acid; the judge orders him sworn. It is a joke, and it is also an accurate observation about who bears the cost of a public duty.

5. The defence is not put. Snubbin is competent but disengaged; Phunky, the junior, is nervous, and in examining Winkle opens a door through which Buzfuz walks. Mr Pickwick's defence, that he was talking about a servant, is true, absurd and unprovable, and nobody makes the jury feel it.

Conclusion

The trial is a study in how a court reaches a wrong result without anybody in the room telling a lie. Mrs Bardell genuinely believes she was proposed to; the witnesses genuinely saw what they describe; the judge genuinely wants order; the jury genuinely decides. What is missing is the one thing that would have exposed the case, an insistence on evidence of the promise itself, and nobody present takes responsibility for supplying it. That is a heavier charge than any accusation of corruption would have been.

2. Possession of the weapon. Luigi was holding the knife when the alarm was raised. Nothing in law comes nearer to a complete case than an accused holding the murder weapon over the body.

3. Ownership of the weapon. The Indian dagger was the twins' own property, brought with them from abroad, exhibited about the town and well known to be theirs. Two men, their own knife, their hands on it, at the body.

4. Motive: an established quarrel. There was open ill-feeling between the twins and the Driscoll family. Luigi had kicked Tom Driscoll at a public meeting, and the Judge, as head of the family and a man of the old code, had taken up the quarrel on his nephew's behalf, to the point of a challenge.

5. Opportunity. They were in the house, at night, at the moment of the killing, with no one else accounted for.

6. Character and prejudice. They were foreigners in a small Southern town, mysterious in their origins, and the community was disposed to believe the worst of them. This is not evidence at all, but it operates as if it were, and Twain shows it doing so.

How the circumstantial case was destroyed

Wilson does not attack the honesty of the witnesses. He accepts everything they say, and finds one fact none of them noticed.

1. The murderer grasped the handle, and left a bloody thumb-print on it.

2. Fingerprints are unique and permanent. Wilson explains to the court what twenty years of a ridiculed hobby have taught him: the pattern on the ball of each finger differs in every human being, never changes from infancy to death, and cannot be forged or worn away. Twain gives it the phrase that has followed the book ever since, a "natal autograph".

3. He proves the method before he uses it. He has members of the jury and the court make prints there and then, mixes them, and identifies each person from his own slides. He establishes his instrument in front of the tribunal before asking it to decide anything by it.

4. He compares the print with the twins' prints. They do not match. The twins did not hold that knife at the moment of the killing, and the entire circumstantial case falls at once.