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Is judging a person blindly or using poor judgement to judge someone discouraged in Hinduism? Is it a sin? If yes what punishment would be granted for committing such a sin.?

EDIT: Blind judgement may also include
Forming an opinion WITHOUT careful thought. And believing such opinion to be completely true or factual without doing any verification or research. For example, if a person say Mr. A accuses Mr. B of committing a certain crime. And if Mr. C blindly believes Mr. A's accusation to be true without asking Mr. A to provide any evidence. Is it sinful on Mr. C's part to blindly believe a person's accusation.
Blindly believing an innocent person to be a culprit might be harmful to the innocent person. For example a person gets falsely accused of rape and most people blindly believe that he is a rapist and start shaming him. This might cause depression or sadness to the innocent person as he doesn't want to be called a rapist. In such a case the people blindly believing him to be a rapist, are those people bound to a sin? I hope you get my point.

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  • Question: What really you refer to as a sin? Some heinous crime like murder etc or even day to day actions like cheating, treachery, infidelity etc ?
    – Just_Do_It
    Feb 15, 2019 at 13:52
  • @Just_Do_It Any kind of worong doing, such as cheating, robbing, murder, harassment, blind judgement etc. I refer to as a sin.
    – Somanna
    Feb 15, 2019 at 13:56
  • By judging do you mean 1) to form an opinion about (something or someone) after careful thought 2) law : to make an official decision about (a legal case)? Both are very different.
    – Say No To Censorship
    Feb 15, 2019 at 14:43
  • @sv. I've edited my question which might answer your question.
    – Somanna
    Feb 15, 2019 at 17:30
  • Ok. Looks better now. I asked because the answer below appears to be assuming the second meaning i.e., a legal case where an appointed judge makes a wrong judgement. But you are simply asking if in general people should be judging others without proper understanding. Correct?
    – Say No To Censorship
    Feb 15, 2019 at 18:52

1 Answer 1

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Yes, judging wrongly is a sin or a crime.

In Hinduism, the responsibility of passing judgement (punishing wrong-doers) rests on the king.

For invisible crimes/sins the responsibility, however, rests on Yama the God of Karma and death.

A king maintains a council (parishad) comprised of Brahmins who are well versed in Srutis and the Smritis, to be able to prescribe the most appropriate punishments for a crime.

There are two cases here:

Case 1:

This is the case where a person is actually guilty of committing a crime but does not get punished appropriately by the king and his council.

In this case, the king, the criminal, the judges and the witnesses each share 1/4th of the guilt.

Manu smriti 8.18. One quarter of (the guilt of) an unjust (decision) falls on him who committed (the crime), one quarter on the (false) witness, one quarter on all the judges, one quarter on the king.

Case 2:

Here some innocent person gets wrongly punished without committing any crime.

In this case the king is held totally responsible.

Manu Smriti 9.249. When a king punishes an innocent (man), his guilt is considered as great as when he sets free a guilty man; but (he acquires) merit when he punishes (justly

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