Your brief, or your life!

Your brief, or your life!
MANOJ MITTA

Round the year, Delhi's Patiala House is the most crowded of all the stately buildings encircling India Gate. Not surprising, given that the criminal courts of three police districts are located there. Patiala House is also walking distance from the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court. Given its strategic location, one could hardly be faulted for expecting Patiala House to serve as a role model to subordinate courts around the country.

But look at the kind of "caution notice" which the bar association of Patiala House was constrained to put out on February 8. "It has been brought to the notice of the executive committee of the association that some of our advocates stand outside the court room entrances, at the main gates, in parking area/lawns/corridors and call the litigants to engage them in their cases, assuring them a sure success in their cases. Such acts on the part of those members is highly uncalled for, unprofessional and unethical and amounts to professional misconduct." This was the first time such a notice was ever issued, at least in Patiala House. And its damaging contents confirm that the touts who accost the litigants in the courts are sometimes the advocates themselves. Again, one could hardly be faulted for expecting that notice to have had a salutary effect on the lawyers.

But things could not have been more different. Far from restraining the lawyers from behaving as touts, the notice seems to have provoked some to solicit clients more aggressively than ever before. In a bizarre incident, barely two days after the notice, a group of at least three lawyers physically attacked two litigants for refusing to hire their services. One of the lawyers, Sachin Mohit, allegedly went to the extent of even slashing the neck of one of the litigants, Bhup Singh, with a razor. The police arrested Sachin on the spot and booked him on the serious allegation of attempt to murder.

The 40-year-old Sachin and his legal associates seem to have been really desperate. The two litigants they pounced upon were no moneybags. Both are humble drivers -- Bhup Singh of a bus and Ram Lakhan of a three-wheeler. They happened to visit Patiala House on that fateful day because they had been separately challaned for some traffic violations. The police version of the incident is as follows: On the morning of February 10, which was a Saturday, Sachin and his bar colleagues approached Ram Lakhan while he was waiting for his employer near the court canteen. Ram Lakhan spurned their overtures saying his boss would handle the matter. The enraged lawyers started beating Ram Lakhan. Though the two drivers were strangers to each other, Bhup Singh intervened in the scuffle to rescue Ram Lakhan. As the lawyers turned their attention to Bhup Singh, Ram Lakhan fled from the scene. Sachin at that point fished out the razor and attacked Bhup Singh. The onlookers overpowered Sachin while his colleagues escaped andhave gone underground.

The whole episode makes the bar association's caution notice appear remarkably prescient. So, one could hardly be faulted for expecting the bar association to react with alacrity to drive home the message of its caution notice. Instead, when the police produced him in the court the next day, the vice president of the bar association, J.S. Sangwan, sought to intervene in the case in favour of Sachin, betraying the mentality of a trade union. Fortunately, the magistrate concerned turned Sangwan out of the case.

It was only on October 12 that the executive committee of the bar association held an "emergent meeting" and "strongly condemned" Sachin's alleged crime. The bar leaders also decided at that meeting to issue a show cause notice to Sachin to expel him from the association. The show cause notice is however yet to be given to Sachin as he has since been remanded to the judicial custody.

A more significant fallout of the stabbing episode has been the bar association's decision to set up a vigilance committee to "keep an eye on the members who are engaged in anti-professional activities". The two decisions the vigilance committee has so far announced however have little to do with the problem of lawyers turning into touts and its repercussions on the consumers of justice. But then, to be fair to it, the bar association has rather limited powers. A lawyer expelled by his bar association can continue to practise anywhere, even in that very court. And, if he is so inclined, he can continue to act as a tout as well.

The only body that has the necessary power to check such legal malpractices is the statutory bar council of each state. A law graduate can practise as a lawyer only when he is enrolled with the bar council. Thus, the bar council alone has the power to strip a lawyer of his licence. Unfortunately, like the councils of other professionals, the bar council has a poor track record of taking any punitive action against its members. It would indeed be a shame if even the Patiala House episode is condoned by the bar council.

The bar association has now decided to set up a vigilance committee.