New Delhi: When retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Kiran Bedi was made the chief ministerial candidate of the BJP in Delhi Assembly polls in 2015, a 30-year-old incident returned to haunt her. Some lawyers issued a statement asking people not to back her.
The reason – as a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in Delhi, she had lathi charged agitating advocates at a city court. It made her their enemy. As they say lawyers have a long memory. They neither forget, nor forgive.
Lawyers, police and journalists normally work together. They need each others for professional reasons. But, the relationship between these have not always been cordial. There have several instances lawyers attacking the police and media.
In 2012 March, hundreds of city court lawyers had attacked the media persons in the premises of Metropolitan court in Bengaluru. The reason? Two lawyers without helmet were stopped by the police and later allegedly slapped.
In retaliation, the angry lawyers hit the streets attacking the police. The local media had condemned the hooliganism of lawyers. It had enraged them so much that they attacked journalists in the city courts.
Some of them were even dragged out of court rooms and thrashed. There was a boycott of the media by local lawyers for months. The Supreme Court later ordered a CBI probe into the whole incident. Even after four years, there has been not much progress in the case.
The Madras High court also witnessed a pitched battle between the police and lawyers a few years ago. Lawyers and police have fought with each other at almost every court in the national capital.
The attack on the media inside a courtroom in New Delhi is not an entirely shocking news, because there has been a precedence. The way some lawyers heckled and attacked media persons is highly deplorable.
Lawyers have to be unbiased and being law officers of the court, it is their primary duty to uphold rule of the law at least inside courtrooms. Some of them have defied it and brought a very bad name to the legal profession in their eagerness to prove their “patriotism”.
The Bar Association has condemned it and promised to act against the culprits after an inquiry headed by a retired judge of the High court. In previous cases, no lawyer was punished by the bar in such incidents in violence. Not much is expected from the bar even in the current case.
The media persons have now demanded that the government must act against those who attacked them. The police have promised action. However, nobody is hoping that it is going to be the last such incident.
Comments
0 comment