HOW MURAKHALI GOT A LAWYER

IDIA has supported youths from India’s most marginalised communities through law school and in doing so, placed legal assistance within their reach. That’s how a West Bengal village got its only lawyer.

- Pritha Roy Choudhury

A typical day for Nazrul Molla, 26, starts with meeting clients and documenting their troubles domestic violence, murder, rape, theft, defamation. The first four hours are spent drafting petitions and submissions for the Alipore District Court and the High Court at Esplanade, Kolkata, where Molla, a trial lawyer, practises.

The second half of the day, Molla observes his seniors in court, learning how a case is presented and argued while maintaining decorum and peace. Three days in a week, after work, Molla privately tutors law aspirants at a coaching centre to supplement his income. The remaining three weekdays, he counsels villagers in Murakhali on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and helps them gather their documents.

Molla is from Murakhali, a village in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, where residents are worried that after Assam, the NRC will be implemented in West Bengal.

The NRC is a register listing the names of Indian citizens in Assam. The register was first prepared in 1951 and had not been updated until now. It is being updated to include the names of all those who can furnish documents to prove they were in India before March 24, 1971.

“Everyone is having some problem there,” said Molla. “None of the documents I have seen so far is error-free. I have met a number of people and they were panicking. I told them not to. I will help them with the documents required and get their a¦davits done.”

The residents of Murakhali may not know this but they have a non-profit trust founded in Sikkim in 2010 to thank for Molla’s expert assistance.