The Bench and the Bar

Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, who has been one of Twitter’s more prolific and active lawyers (with 37,330 tweets as of 2015 and 98,000 followers more recently), has been banned from the platform and has sent a legal notice to the social media giant, according to The Print.

At least three Indian lawyers’ smartphones have allegedly been hacked since May 2019 with elite cyber-weapons sold to various governments and security services by Israeli company NSO Group, which has been sued by Facebook this week in a California court over NSO-connected hacking campaigns allegedly exploiting WhatsApp vulnerabilities against 1,400 activists gl(of whom at least 19 are based in India).

Senior counsel and 1995 Delhi University law graduate Ritin Rai, who was bestowed the senior counsel title by the Supreme Court earlier this year, has joined London barristers’ chambers 7 King’s Bench Walk as a door tenant, according to its press release.

Legendary senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, one of the most outspoken and eloquent storytellers of the bar, passed away early this morning, according to the PTI at age 95, a week before his 96th birthday on 14 September.

Shekhar Bobby Saraf, an NLSIU Bangalore 1996 graduate, has been one of five appointed as permanent judge of the Calcutta high court in the latest law ministry notification of judicial appointments.

Over the last several days, many have remembered Mr. Arun Jaitley as a politician, as a person, as a mentor, as a friend, as a colleague, and as a devoted family man.

CNLU Patna 2011 graduate and CGST Department assistant commissioner Chandan Prakash Pandey has been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly taking a Rs 2.5 lakh bribe to from the owner of a flour mill to correct tax records, according to PTI and other reports.

The Supreme Court has today confirmed the elevation of ex-Calcutta high court judge and, since August 2018, Jharkhand high-court chief justice Aniruddha Bose, alongside justices AS Bopanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant, according to NDTV and others.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra in an interview with ThePrint has elaborated on his latest campaign to fight for ‘men’s rights’.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has apparently written yet another open letter calling for a lot of different things at once, reported Bar & Bench:

Advocate Utsav Bains, who is practising in Delhi and has previously appeared for a rape survivor in the ultimately successful conviction of Asaram Bapu, has written a public Facebook post alleging that an anonymous person, possibly a ‘fixer’, had offered him Rs 1.5 crores to represent the sexual harassment complainant against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, in order to force him to resign.

Not missing a beat after the press conference-cum-special bench-cum-non-order the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi had in a hurry constituted on Saturday to caution the media about reporting the sexual harassment allegations against him, functionaries of the bar had immediately jumped to his defense.

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi has instituted a special bench this morning, at 10:30am in Court Number 1, headed by himself alongside justices Arun Mishra and Sanjeev Khanna, to vociferously refute sexual harassment allegations made against him by a complainant in a letter sent to all Supreme Court judges.

The Supreme Court has elevated 38 lawyers to senior counsel status, a list that unusually also includes some bright up-and-comers and also several graduates of NLSIU Bangalore, which has become a semi-regular fixture in the senior counsel stakes.*

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has issued a press release slamming recently retired Justice J Chelameswar for speaking to the press after his retirement, explaining why he (and others) took the unprecedented step in January of calling a press conference criticising the conduct of their Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra.

Nearly three months after overdue elections were held on the Supreme Court’s order for the Bihar bar council on 27 March, the vote counting is now complete and has confirmed the 25 winning members, including the re-election of senior counsel and ex-Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra.