Telangana High Court (Photo: DC File)
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has imposed Rs 15 lakh costs on advocate Rapolu Bhaskar and petitioner Pulipati Srinivas, a cloth merchant from Shadnagar, for playing fraud with the court and causing pain to the innocent opposite parties by filing series of litigations on the same issue to get favourable orders while suppressing facts that they had failed in the earlier rounds of litigations.
The court was irked with the unbecoming attitude of the legal practitioner in filing the petitions by concealing facts and making unnecessary litigations. The court expressed dissatisfaction against the counsel as he was involved in such types of litigations in earlier occasions also and the court had imposed costs on the petitioners. The court cautioned the advocate that such an attitude amounted to professional misconduct.
Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka observed that as officers of the court, advocates owe a duty to the court and they shall not regard themselves as mere mouthpieces of the client. He should decline to represent any client who insists on engaging in unethical behaviour.
The judge was dealing with a petition filed by Pulipati Srinivas, who took `30 lakh from a co-operative credit society but failed to pay the instalments, which resulted in the auction of his G+1 building property in Padmavathi colony in Shadnagar municipal limits.
The petitioner sought to stop the auction of the property by the debtor co-operative credit society and said that there were mismatches in calculating the interest and without issuing notices/ summons to him, the district cooperative officer had conducted the auction.
Rapolu Bhaskar submitted that despite the interim stay orders of the High court, an open auction was held on 12.10.2023 without any intimation.
However, during the arguments, Justice Bheemapaka came to know that the interim stay order had been vacated by the court in July 2023 and the debtor bank was given the liberty to conduct a fresh auction. The court also came to know that Bhaskar filed another writ petition in 2023 questioning the notices, which directed the petitioner to vacate the subject house and to conduct an open auction on 12.10.2023. The writ petition was dismissed as infructuous.
The judge faulted the counsel and petitioner for not mentioning such facts and approaching the court afresh.
“Any person approaching the court must come with clean hands and if he/she withholds some vital material, in order to gain advantage over the other side, then the individual would be guilty of playing fraud which cannot be countenanced”, Justice Bheemapaka said.
Despite being fined ` one lakh costs in a petition, the counsel has been exhibiting the same attitude which forces this court to impose exemplary costs on the petitioner and counsel, to be quantified at `15 lakh’, the judge mentioned in the orders.
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
Next Story
