Rajasthan HC petitions SC to punish errant lawyer

NEW DELHI: The issue of professional misconduct by advocates has come under the supreme court scanner with Rajasthan high court filing a petition against a lawyer who allegedly walked away with a pending case file and passed it on to his client.

The high court, through its deputy registrar Mahendra Kumar Sharma, has approached the apex court seeking severe action against the lawyer and questioned the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) decision to let him off with just a warning. “The respondent deserves no leniency. Even after the misconduct, he tried to give false explanations instead of tending an unconditional apology,” the petition, filed through Sunil Jain, said.

Describing advocate Lalit Kumar Bhandari’s action of taking the file away without official permission as “grave misconduct” and “gross negligence”, the high court said BCI’s order needed to be reviewed as it appeared to have set a wrong precedent. The petition alleged the file skimmed by the advocate was recovered from his client’s bag while the two were sitting in the high court canteen.

The advocate, in his defence, denied any impropriety and claimed that his client had picked up the file by mistake, assuming that it belonged to him. The high court submitted that the BCI had failed to consider the apex court’s judgment in the case of D P Chadda vs Triyugi Narain Mishra where it had held that “professional misconduct is grave when it consists of betraying the confidence of a client and is gravest when it is a deliberate attempt at misleading the court or an attempt at practicing deception or fraud on the court.”