In a lot of instances, abject poverty pushes people into an ebb of complete isolation and they lose their sense of what is right and wrong. This is typically the case of the single mother in Kuala Pilah who has landed on the wrong side of law by leaving a boy under her care alone at home.

There are various versions to this sad tale and plight of this mother, who has been running a household as well as caring for two ailing seniors. The outcome of her case was plastered boldly in the all the media yesterday and on reading this, I asked myself if there is any fairness in the penalty meted out to her.

Can we forgive ourselves for taking RM10,000 from her as a fine for what she was pushed to do by the very uncaring society she is in today?

The woman needs help, not fines and jail terms. The charge on her is plausible but not acceptable if you look at it any which way. Her poor father who must have toiled too hard for the money he pooled to pay the fine to bail his daughter and that might have been all he owned.

The father’s own account testified that the woman had gone through nothing but trials too big for her from a tender age.

The police and the courts have all a role to play but aren’t they made up of people with conscience and should we not deal with cases like this with some leniency, minus the iron mask?

She might have miscalculated her actions and failed, too, as a mother but she is not a criminal, why treat her as one? And remember, for every case like this which is reported, there could be scores of others in a predicament unimaginable and unbelievable in a country of abundance where there is actually enough for everyone.