Outsiders unwelcome even in Taluk courts

CHENNAI: For many lawyers in Chennai, the ballyhoo over the notification that it would help them appear before any court sounded like a joke. After all, they were aware that they could not even go to the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Egmore without getting the ‘nod’ from the lawyers practising there.Sharing a personal experience, advocate R Karthikeyan said that for applying for a bail petition for an accused in the Egmore court, he had to pay `10,000 to the advocates there. “Otherwise they would not allow us to file the bail petition. They adopt various techniques to ward us off, such as filing another weak bail application on behalf of my client. The judge would get confused and dismiss it. The gang would then call us for negotiation and demand money,” he alleges.Egmore court is no exemption. It happens in all the taluk courts too. Lawyers outside are not allowed to practise there. “There it is not for extorting money, but it is a matter of livelihood. Their exposure to law is limited, so they depend only on cases that comes to the taluk court,” according to a cross-section of advocates.