Lawyer gets 5-year ban for professional misconduct

The advocate challenged the suspension by filing a petition at the Madras High Court.

By :  migrator
Update: 2019-06-01 20:54 GMT
Madras High Court

Chennai

Close on the heels of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry suspending a lawyer from practice for five years after he was found guilty of attempting to misappropriate his client’s property worth more than Rs one crore, another advocate, this time from Kumbakonam, was suspended for professional misconduct.


However, MV Santharaman, the advocate in the eye of this controversy, has challenged the suspension in a plea at the Madras High Court. Following this, the vacation bench comprising Justice N Satish Kumar and Justice PT Asha has directed the Bar Council of India (BCI) to pass appropriate orders and dispose of the stay application on merits and in accordance with law. The council was asked to take a decision within a month.


As per the case, MV Renuka was an erstwhile client of Santharaman and he had appeared on her behalf in a partition suit in 1993 in the file of the Principal District Munsif Court in Kumbakonam.


Later in 2003, he was appointed as the counsel for Aranmanai Raman Chettiar Chathiram Trust to defend the rights and interest of the trust. In one of the cases involving the trust, Renuka’s father was directed by a trial court to pay a huge sum of money to the trust. Following this, he had moved the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court challenging a trial court order.


On his demise, Renuka was brought on record. Santharaman had succeeded in obtaining an order directing her to pay the trust a sum of about Rs 39 lakh. However, Renuka lodged a complaint on August 2, 2017, against the lawyer before the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. She enclosed three documents along with the complaint, alleging that he had created a forged sale agreement with one S Packiyanathan, and had assisted the parties to grab the land that belonging to them.


During the inquiry, the disciplinary committee of the council found that Santharaman was guilty of professional misconduct. Following this, he was suspended from practising for five years. The committee also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 to be paid to the Bar Council, failing which he would suffer suspension for a further period of one year.

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