Fooling the boss

A session or district judge is the senior most judge in any district. Often the two offices are held by one person and he is called district and session judge. All remaining judges are his subordinates. The promotion of subordinate judges largely depends on the annual confidential report (ACR) which is written by the session judge. Various tactics are adopted to get a good ACR.

Once there was a shrewd civil judge who wanted to be in his boss’s good books. One day the civil judge went to the grocery store where session judge would use to go. The civil judge was wearing a skull cap similar to one worn by people during prayers. He was wearing clothes slightly torn near the chest pocket.

The civil judge went in the shop and started buying small quantities of various items. He asked the shopkeeper to make the bill which came around Rs 1,000. The judge came near the shopkeeper and introduced himself in whispers and told him that he would pay the bill on his next salary as he was short of money.

The shopkeeper was shocked to learn about the poverty of a civil judge. When the session judge came to the shop after some days, the shopkeeper told him the whole incident. The session judge felt sorry for the ‘poor’ civil judge and gave him a very good ACR, believing him to be very fair.

It was couple of years later when the session judge came to know the real evil face behind that civil judge.