Whistleblower lawyer gets Supreme Court cover in ‘fake’ molestation case

Source: dnaindia.com

The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of a whistleblower lawyer who blew the lid off a racket involving law interns appearing as lawyers in Bombay’s district courts and even getting accused released on forged sureties.

After one of the affected interns lodged a molestation case against the lawyer as a counter-blast, the apex court has stayed all proceedings in that case and agreed to hear the lawyer’s plea to quash the false case against him. The molestation case was registered against him on August 28, 2015, at Dindoshi Police station and already the lawyer in question, who does not wish to be named, has received several threats to withdraw his complaint under probe by the Bar Council of Maharashtra.

The lawyer who barely has seven years of experience got whiff of the racket involving dummy lawyers while appearing before the City Civil Court in Dindoshi in July 2013. He noticed that a female intern working with a law firm Kumar and Associates was putting her signatures and receiving a summons in a case as an advocate. The petitioner lawyer informed the apex court that on July 11, 2014, the same intern appeared before the 67th Metropolitan Magistrate court, Borivali and forged the signature of the same law firm.

On a deeper probe, it came to light that the intern stood surety for releasing an accused on bail who was none other than her own brother. For doing so, she presented a forged identity card, salary certificate and affidavit of surety to get her brother Sujat Rahat Khan out from jail. On realizing what fraud was played upon the courts, the petitioner armed will all materials, sent a complaint against the intern and her law firm to the Bombay High Court Chief Justice and the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa on July 6, 2015. To show that the intern was not a lawyer but a student, the petitioner attached a copy of the hall ticket of the intern’s LLB exam of November 2018 with the complaint.

On August 21, 2015, the Bar Council issued a show-cause notice to the girl intern seeking an explanation. Six days later, the girl filed a case of molestation against the petitioner alleging that the petitioner called her to a place where she was held by him in an objectionable manner.