Five Coimbatore lawyers barred from practice for role in fake courts

COIMBATORE: Nearly four years after The Times of India exposed a thriving ‘fake court’ menace in Coimbatore, the statutory Bar council took an unprecedented step of placing five practicing advocates under suspension for professional misconduct.
The five lawyers, two of them women, were restrained from practicing in courts, tribunals and any such forums in India, either in their names or in any assumed name, for a period of three years under Section 6 (1)(d) of the Advocates Act 1961 or until the disposal of the disciplinary proceedings initiated by the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.The have been charged with conducting fake courts in the name of ‘arbitral tribunal’ in Coimbatore, and passing orders.
In its order last month, the disciplinary committee of the Bar council told the five advocates – P R Shanmugam, K Rajaram, V Jayalakshmi, R D Vijay Anand and N Kausalya Devi -- that being members of the legal profession, they had indulged in illegal activities in a calculated manner for financial gain. They have overstepped their limits knowingly, and committed serious misconduct and earned a bad reputation to the advocates’ community among the public, the council said.
TOI’s expose in March 2011 revealed as to how “parallel courts” were functioning in Coimbatore region, with furnished court halls, ‘judges’, duffedars and cars with beacon lights. They issued ‘summons’ and passed ‘awards’ in civil cases involving several lakhs of rupees. Their operation was stayed by the Madras high court later, after a PIL by an advocate highlighted the menace.
The Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had received a complaint from the Coimbatore Bar Association seeking necessary action against fake arbitrators who conducted fake courts and passed awards. The ‘arbitral tribunals’ were functioning without any sanction or permission or recognition from the high court or the Supreme Court or by any other competent authority, it said. Following the complaint, the council had taken note of the issue, and issued prohibitory orders against the five advocates, restraining them from practising before any legal forum.
When they were called upon to offer explanation, Shanmugam had sent a reply saying he had intimated registrars of the Supreme Court and the Madras high court about the tribunal. They did not object to the functioning of the tribunal, he said, adding that he was a member of the Indian Council of Arbitration and International Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ICADR).
Advocate Rajaram appeared before the committee and explained that he had done everything lawfully in the matter of passing awards. Jayalakshmi told the committee that she was appointed by the All India and Overseas Arbitration Committee, functioning at KRS Building at Saibaba Colony in Coimbatore, and that she was paid Rs 750 to Rs 1,500 as remuneration to conduct the ‘arbitration proceedings’.
Vijaya Anand clarified that he did not pass any illegal arbitration award and requested the committee to discharge him from the proceedings. Kausalya Devi had argued before the committee that the signature found in the awards passed was not hers, and added that someone had misused her signature and name.
Coimbatore Bar Association president P Nandakumar and secretary M Loganathan, who appeared before the council, were cross-examined by counsel of the five advocates. A disciplinary committee of the Bar council, comprising its chairman K Ranganthan and members K Rajarajan and M Ram Prabakar, found all the five lawyers guilty of misconduct, and ordered their immediate suspension from the Bar for a period of three years from December 3, 2014.