UNION OF INDIA, REP. BY GENERAL MANAGER, SOUTHERN RAILWAY, CHENNAI Vs. FANCY BABU, W/O. BABU THOMAS, (SR. CLERK, PALGHAT DIVISION, S. RLY) RESIDING AT MUTTATHUPADAM HOUSE, GANDHI NAGAR P.O., KOTTAYAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Introduction: Fate served a cruel blow to a woman in her battle of childbirth. Paralysed shoulders below, she has become a living lump of meat with unimpaired cognitive faculties, though - only to make herself acutely aware of her vegetative existence. She has all but been finished, save for her spirit to live and for her dignity to hold up as a woman. And now, is her employer bent on completing the job - stifling her spirit to live and destroying her dignity to be a woman

(2.) Disabled is a pejorative; differently-abled is a euphemism, but capable of recognising and, in fact, redeeming the calamitystricken - yet still resilient - spirit of the physically challenged. The Legislature has lent its helping hand: It has brought out Persons with Disability (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 ('the Act'). The Judiciary, too, has recognised that there is more to a human being than mere locomotion: It has beneficially, expansively interpreted the law. But the employer holds the rule-book and shows its letter but forgets its spirit - even if it were a textualist. The Dispute:

(3.) This is the second round of litigation involving a disabled woman, who has been paralysed shoulders below. The first respondent ('the employee') has no control not only of her lower limbs but also of her bladder and bowls; she is unable to regulate her primary biological requirements, such as urination, for which a catheter has been fixed on a permanent basis.