It was an unprecedented situation that demanded an unprecedented response. The Supreme Court had no alternative but to shift the trial of the 14 accused in the Jammu and Kashmir sex abuse scandal from a Srinagar sessions court to one in Chandigarh, given the intransigent, unrepentant and wholly misguided stand of the Srinagar Bar Association.

The Supreme Court had intervened in like manner in the Best Bakery case two years ago and had ruled that the trial be shifted to Maharashtra since it was obvious that the justice delivery system in Gujarat suffered from serious infirmities and had failed its mandate. In the present case the circumstances may have been very different but the net result was the same: the impossibility of conducting a proper trial because of the non-cooperation of Srinagar’s legal fraternity. Not only did the bar association issue a resolution disallowing its members from representing any one of the accused in the case, it had actively prevented, through acts of intimidation, lawyers from Jammu and outside the state from doing so. The Srinagar Bar Association felt that its stance was entirely justified since the accused had committed indefensible acts.

But as these columns have argued, any credible criminal justice system would first entail the constitutional requirement of establishing guilt and it is precisely this crucial process that the lawyers in Srinagar had attempted to subvert. By playing judge, jury and executioner, they have brought disrepute not just to themselves but their profession. Every lawyer, after all, is professionally enjoined to defend those who seek their services. It would be a fitting response, indeed, if those who have been denied their right of defence take the erring bar association to court for having violated their own norms.