A recent three judge bench judgment of the Supreme Court (Justices B.N. Agrawal, G.S. Singhvi and Aftab Alam) held R.K. Anand, a senior advocate, guilty of contempt for suborning a prosecution witness in a case in which Anand was appearing for the accused, Sanjiv Nanda. The court found the conduct of I.U. Khan as special prosecutor inappropriate, but let him off because, on the evidence, his conduct did not constitute criminal contempt of court. The judgment does not deal merely with the law of contempt. The observations and the principles laid down transcend the facts of the case and are of seminal significance.

The bench bemoans the general erosion of professional values among lawyers at all levels. In anguished tone Justice Aftab Alam observes: “We find that even some highly successful lawyers seem to live by their own rules of conduct. We have viewed with disbelief senior advocates freely taking part in TV debates or giving interviews to a TV reporter/anchor of the show on issues that are directly the subject matter of cases pending before the court and in which they are appearing for one of the sides or taking up the brief of one of the sides soon after the TV show.” Thereafter there is a picturesque reference by Justice Alam to the fictional barrister Rumpole — who was not bereft of professional values. The judgment warns with concern that unless the trend of falling professional standards is promptly arrested, “it will have very deleterious consequences for administration of justice in the country because no judicial system in a democratic society can work satisfactorily unless it is supported by a bar whose members are monetarily accessible and affordable to the people.”

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