“If the Bar, which is the source for the Bench, becomes criminalised and corrupt, the Bench will get only bad apples. That will be the last nail in the coffin of democracy. There is no point in ruing thereafter that the judiciary has collapsed,” the Madras High Court observed on Friday after expressing deep concern over 263 criminal cases having been booked against advocates between January and April this year.
Justices P.N. Prakash and R. Hemalatha made the observations while finding lawyer R. Krishnamurthy guilty of contempt of court. The advocate had circulated an audio message on WhatsApp threatening Justice M. Dhandapani for having condemned the way in which a woman lawyer and her daughter, a law student, had behaved rudely with the police when they were questioned for roaming around in Chennai during COVID-19 lockdown.
“All judges, right from a Magistrate to judges of the Supreme Court, including us, have come from the Bar and have not descended from the heavens nor have been imported from other countries. We are, therefore, grateful to the institution called the Bar, which has catapulted us to various judicial offices. We look upon the Bar as an independent and fearless body that would protect the judiciary when the judiciary is vilified and targeted by others,” the Bench wrote.
“However, when we come across members of the Bar getting involved in unsavoury incidents, our paternal instinct is bound to make us exhibit our anguish and concern publicly. Statistics show that 263 criminal cases have been registered against advocates in the State between January and April, 2021. It is also unfortunate that Bar leaders tend to play God by readily going to the rescue of errant advocates who involve themselves in breaking the institution from inside,” it added.
Observing that the contemnor does not deserve mercy for his conduct unbecoming of a lawyer, the Bench wrote: “If the respondent had not been an advocate, then, we could be sympathetic to some extent. We usually extend the longest of our olive branches to disgruntled litigants who attack judges off and on... To be noted, advocates may be proximate to Judges, but, that does not lead to the inference that they are proximate to justice.”
The judges found him guilty of having scandalised the court by stating in the video that he had sent a representation to the Chief Justice with a request to shift the hearing of an anticipatory bail petition filed by the woman lawyer and her daughter from Justice Dhandapani to some other “honest and honourable” judge.
They also found him guilty of having interfered with administration of justice and imposed a fine of ₹2,000 for each of the two charges.
In default, he was ordered to undergo simple imprisonment for one week for each default.
They also ordered that the lawyer should not practice in the High Court for a period of one year and marked a copy of their order to the Bar Council of Kerala, where he had got enrolled himself, and also to the Supreme Court Bar Association for taking appropriate action in accordance with law since he had also claimed to be practising in the Supreme Court too.
