The Madras High Court has taken serious note of the practice of advocates accompanying their clients to take possession of immovable properties forcibly. It has said, such conduct demeans the entire legal profession and needs to be curbed forthwith.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh has summoned three advocates, an Inspector of Police and a property purchaser to the court on Thursday following a complaint that they broke open the lock of a residential house and took forcible possession of the property.
“The photographs that have been placed before this court show that persons claiming themselves to be advocates were present near the property at the time of the incident. Advocates are supposed to perform their duty only before the court. They are not supposed to go along with their clients to take forcible possession of the property.
“Such conduct on the part of the advocates demeans the entire profession and at some stage, stringent action has to be taken in this regard. It is not the first time where this court is noticing such an incident. In spite of measures taken by this court, this attitude on the part of some advocates continues which has to be dealt with more severity,” the judge wrote.
The interim order was passed on a writ petition filed by a woman from Tondiarpet in Chennai to forbear the Inspector of Tondiarpet Police Station Krishna Raj from interfering with the civil dispute in which she had obtained an interim order from a competent court.
The petitioner’s counsel P. Vijendran told the court that her client’s husband was employed in Qatar and that he had purchased a 2,250 square feet house along with his brothers. The siblings had, however, registered the house in the name of their mother.
Due to some differences, the petitioner’s mother-in-law wanted to sell the property. Hence, the petitioner, filed a partition suit before a city civil court last year in her capacity as the power agent of her husband but the house was sold during the pendency of the suit.
Immediately, the petitioner rushed to the city civil court once again and obtained an interim injunction on March 12 this year restraining the purchaser of the property from evicting her from her claimed share of 450 square feet on the first floor of the house.
Despite such injunction order, the purchaser had gone to the house, when the petitioner was away in Cudddalore, along with the Inspector of Police and three advocates on March 21 and broke open the lock to take possession of the property, Mr. Vijendran said.
After recording his submissions, Justice Venkatesh said, he was inclined to invoke his jurisdiction under Section 10 of the Contempt of Courts Act since the law empowers the High Court to initiate contempt proceedings even for disobedience of the orders of the trial courts.
“In a case of this nature, this court has to exercise such a jurisdiction to ensure that these incidents do not happen in future,” the judge said and directed three lawyers G. Punniyakodi, D. Raja and P. Rajendran as well as the Inspector of Police Krishna Raj to be present in the court on Thursday.
