Attack on magistrate: bar assn. office-bearers booked

Police named 10 ‘identifiable’ lawyers as co-accused in the case

The police have named two Thiruvananthapuram Bar Association office-bearers as the main accused in the high-profile case relating to the "attack" on a woman judicial officer, Deepa Mohan, in her courtroom at the District Court here on Wednesday.

They identified the main accused as K.P. Jayachandran and Pachalloor Jayakrishnan. They are president and secretary of the association respectively. The controversial development has ballooned into a bitter confrontation between lawyers and judicial officers.

A set of lawyers boycotted the court on Friday even as the Kerala Judicial Officers’ Association sought protection for its members from the Kerala High Court. The High Court has registered a case on its own in connection with the incident.

The officers association had pleaded inability to discharge their duties impartially due to the "violent activities, intimidation, threat of boycott and humiliation" at the hands of lawyers. Importantly, the issue has spotlighted the simmering discontent among a section of women judicial officers with the "toxic work atmosphere" they reportedly faced in courtrooms.

Some had reportedly told their superiors earlier that they felt singled out for vilification by individual lawyers whose persistent demands for granting bail and adjourning cases they could not heed legally.

Lawyers disrupted the functioning of the court despite a Supreme Court ruling in November that frowned upon boycott of the judiciary by advocates. They turned back petitioners, litigants, witnesses and government officers who had arrived for answering the summons or on other legal business.

The police have also named 10 "identifiable" lawyers as co-accused in the case.

The FIR said the lawyers had stormed into the court of Ms. Mohan and attempted to browbeat her into revoking an earlier order of hers. The magistrate had drawn the ire of lawyers for having cancelled the bail of an accused person on the charge of intimidating a witness.

The police said the lawyers rioted inside the courtroom, cleared the chamber of attendees, locked the magistrate inside her office and threatened to beat her if she ventured out. The police have sought the court's permission to record the crime scene and interview the magistrate.