The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Mehrauli, has directed Advocate S.K Bahadur to pay back Rs 20,000 which he had charged from Kuldip Industrial Corporation (KIC) as legal fees, with 18 per cent interest till the date of repayment.

It also asked Bahadur, who claimed to be a practising lawyer in the Delhi High Court, to pay a compensation of Rs 5,000 to the owner of KIC for mental harassment and Rs 1,000 towards litigation cost.

The complainant had hired the services of Bahadur for fighting a case before the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under the ministry of commerce regarding a fiscal penalty imposed on the complainant.

The complainant paid Rs 20,000 for handling the case on May 25, 1993, and a further sum of Rs 20,000 was paid on the lawyer's demand for "managing a favourable order".

The complainant alleged that Bahadur did not file the required appeal before the concerned authority nor did he ever appear before the said authority. Therefore, he had to engage another attorney S P Dhupper. The complainant approached Bahadur many times to get his money back. However, Bahadur did not repay the amount and contended that "legal profession is not a commercial enterprise nor an industry and therefore the profession does not fit in the scheme of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA)".

"An advocate is not a facility and the client does not enter into a commercial contract with an advocate and that legal profession is neither a collective name under common management of which an advocate could be called an employee," Bahadur said.

He also said the complaint was not maintainable as only the Bar Council, under the Advocates Act of 1961, alone had the jurisdiction against an advocate.

President of district forum T.C Gupta and members S.P. Chopra and Nargis Raj Kumar, however, said "there is no provision in the Advocates Act to enable the Bar Council to deal with the dispute between the client and the advocate, if the clients seek a remedy of damage or refund of money paid to the advocates. "The bar council can deal with only disciplinary matters," the forum said in a recent judgement.