Radhabinod Pal Biography 
Radhabinod Pal was an Indian jurist and the Indian member appointed to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East's trials of Japanese war crimes committed during World War second. He was the only one who submitted a judgment which insisted all defendants were not guilty. Monuments have been erected in Yasukuni Shrine and the Kyoto Ryozen Gokoku Shrine in his honour. In 1959, he received Padma Vibhushan. Renowned barrister, Pranab Kumar Pal was his son and father-in-law of Debi Prasad Pal, a Senior Advocate practising in the Supreme Court of India and High Courts of India.
Pal was born in 1886 in a small village called 'Salimpur' of Kushtia District of present day Bangladesh. His education was done at Presidency College, Kolkata. He completed graduation in Mathematics and law. He worked as professor at the Law College of the University of Calcutta from 1923 till 1936. He became a judge of Kolkata High Court in 1941 and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1944. He was made a legal adviser in 1927 and dispatched him to the Tokyo Trials in 1946. He condemned the Japanese war-time conduct as "devilish and fiendish". Yet he reached a conclusion that all the defendants not guilty of Class A war crimes.
His conclusion was “"I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges." Following the war-crimes trials, he was elected to the United Nations' International Law Commission (1952-1966). In 1966, the Emperor of Japan conferred upon Pal the First Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. A monument was erected after Pal's death at Yasukuni Shrine.
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Updated: January 21, 2014
