Kollam: Clients protest against delaying' advocate

KOLLAM: Clients of a lawyer performed a ‘ponkala’ protest in front of his office near Kollam court complex on Friday. The lawyer allegedly cheated his clients -- relatives of the persons who died in an accident near Pallimukku here in 2002-- by not filing their case for at least 14 years after he was entrusted with the case.

Vasudevan of Ponnethu Thekkathil, Alummoodu, Eravipuram, his son Sajan and his co-brother Omanakkuttan who set off from Eravipuram to the KSRTC bus stand in Kollam on their way to Sabarimala in an autorickshaw were killed along with two pedestrians in an accident at Vendar Mukku near Pallimukku here. 

The autorickshaw in which the trio were travelling collided with a KSRTC bus which later rammed onto the pedestrians killing five persons. The incident took place on December 20, 2012. Omanakkuttan and Sajan succumbed to the injuries at the district hospital in Kollam and Vasu, at the Thiruvananthapuram MCH.

“The case was entrusted to a lawyer Kallada P. Arjunan in 2002,” M. Simod, a relative of the deceased told DC. “We had also paid the charges incurred for documentation of the case. However, the lawyer did not file the case at the court for the last 14 years. Now, when the case was filed, it is in the name of the lawyer’s junior advocate V.V. Syam. The former, who has made all these delay, is not in the scene anymore.”

The petitioners are the relatives of the deceased who allegedly entrusted a lawyer with the case to claim a compensation for the deaths, pointing out that the rash driving of the KSRTC bus driver had resulted in the disaster. The lawyer refused to comment despite repeated efforts to contact him.