The Rajasthan State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) on Wednesday recommended “meditation in solitude” to fight the COVID-19 outbreak which has infected over 150 persons across the country. The Commission took up the matter suo motu, taking cognizance of the pandemic, and advised the affected persons to live in isolation.
“While those suspecting infection should immediately report to the nearest health centre and be sent to isolation for 14 days as per the World Health Organization’s guidelines, the Commission recommends that all people should meditate in solitude,” SHRC chairperson Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma said in his two-page order.
Justice Sharma praised the State government's measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 and applauded the treatment given by doctors at the Sawai Man Singh Government Hospital here to three patients who had tested positive and have since recovered. The treatment regimen included a combination of drugs for swine flu, malaria and HIV.
As a judge of the Rajasthan High Court, Justice Sharma had created a flutter in 2017 with his remark that a peahen gets pregnant after swallowing the tears of a peacock. His comments came after he passed an order on his last working day asking the Centre to declare the cow as a national animal and increase the punishment for cow slaughter to life imprisonment.
Justice Sharma commented that a peacock was a lifelong ‘brahmachari’ (celibate) and it would never have sexual intercourse with a peahen to reproduce. He was appointed a member of the SHRC for a five-year term in 2018 during the previous Bharatiya Janata Party regime.
A direction to the State government on September 4, 2019, the Commission’s Bench, of which Justice Sharma was also a part of, asked for creating an awareness campaign to keep women away from live-in relationships, saying it was against their human rights as they could be “treated as concubines”. It also asked for a separate law to regulate and register live-in relationships.
