At the Sessions Court on Monday, a 45-year-old single mother pleaded guilty to robbing a man of RM220.

She pitifully told the court that she did this to support for her three schoolgoing children. She earns only RM350 a month

She was thrown into jail for four years.

In the same court later, two unemployed men, including a college graduate, were charged for robbery.

They had posed as police officers and robbed a man of his handphone and RM1,100 in cash.

The two men were only jailed three years each.

This happened on the same day, in the same courtroom, sentencing by the same judge.

There are numerous examples of how rotten our judiciary is. Most are grand, relatively extreme examples of violations of justice.

This story, though perhaps not fantastic in it's newsworthiness, not only shows us how justice is meted out in our beloved country, but it's also testament to frightening challenges rooted in our society.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn said ‘justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognise the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice'.

Where is the conscience in our courtrooms? What is the conscience of our society? Can we hear it? Do we recognise it?