Eight lawyers were today banned from practising for eight weeks by the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry for allegedly threatening CISF personnel and asking them to leave the Madras High Court premises.
The CISF Commandant had given a complaint to the Registrar General of Madras High Court on the incident.
On November 20, a group of lawyers had an argument with CISF personnel after a woman advocate was frisked with hand-held metal detector by a woman CISF personnel.
The lawyers alleged that the frisking process was filmed by another CISF man. After the argument, they allegedly tore down a screen and smashed a table.
The CISF Commandant took serious view of the incident and sent complaints to the court, Bar Council and headquarters of the CISF. While city police registered an FIR against nine advocates and 'others', Bar Council of India advised its unit in Tamil Nadu to issue them show cause notice and take stringent action too.
Accordingly, D Selvam, Chairman of Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, obtained opinion of other members of the Council and prohibited the eight advocates from practicing before any court or tribunal for a period of eight weeks.
Some advocates had allegedly raised slogans against Central Industrial Security Force security cover mandated by the High Court, introduced from November 16.
On October 14, the Court had ordered that the "inner circle" of its campuses here and Madurai should be brought under CISF protection as a temporary measure and directed the state and central governments to jointly formulate a security protocol.
The order came on a suo motu PIL after it saw unruly scenes and obstruction by lawyers agitating for declaration of Tamil as official court language and over contempt of court proceedings against two Madurai-based Bar leaders last month.
On November 4, the Supreme Court had refused to interfere with the High Court order for deployment of CISF by replacing state police security at its Chennai premises.
