The year was 1998, and Malaysian lawyer Ahmad Zaharil was a bit confused when he saw a distressed Indian-Malaysian woman in her 50s being brought into a courtroom to be charged with shoplifting.

Zaharil felt compelled, he explained in a TikTok video, to ask her what her case about, to which she replied that it was because she stole a pencil box worth 18 Malaysian ringgit, or just over 5 American dollars, from a supermarket.

She had promised, she told Zaharil, that she would give her son a pencil box if he finished first in his classroom exams. He was in fourth grade and passed his exams with flying colors.

The lawyer and father of five asked for the case to be postponed while he went to gather evidence of the case, reasoning that if she were to be jailed, no one would be at home to care for her son. The teacher confirmed that indeed her son was the top student, but upon offering double the value of the pencil box to the owner of the supermarket in exchange for the case to be dropped, the man declined.

Zaharil took up the case for free and managed to get jail time and fines waived in exchange for a 1-year good behavior promise.

"Before she left, we passed the hat around and collected a couple of hundred ringgit contributed by court staff, policemen, and me. We handed over the money to the woman," Zaharil, 57, told The Star. "She left after expressing her gratitude and I never saw her again."

In 2018, 20 years later, a young lawyer approached Zaharil one day in court.

"Hello, Sir. You may not know me," he began, "but I am the son of the cleaner you helped 20 years ago. Remember the pencil box case?"

"I almost fainted when he told me who he was," said Zaharil. "It was heart-warming and one of the happiest moments in my life."

Malaysia is a fascinating country, with several major ethnic groups living under a parallel legal system of civil law for non-Muslims, and Sharia court for cases in which all parties are Muslims.

Zaharil, a Malay, said that it was this spirit of national unity and brotherhood that led him to help the woman, an Indian by origin, get out of a jam. He maintains contact with the family and visits them for the Hindu festivals Diwali, and Hari Raya.

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