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On March 25, Additional Sessions Judge (POCSO Special Court) Prahlad Tondon wrote a letter to the Station House Officer of Kotwali police station alleging that he was assaulted by around 150 advocates of the Unnao Bar Association inside his own courtroom.
ASJ Tondon claimed that he was slapped, abused, and kicked by a mob of lawyers belonging to the Unnao Bar Association who had entered the courtroom while chanting slogans and throwing chairs towards the judge’s dais.
In his letter, the additional sessions judge has given a vivid account of what transpired in his courtroom
As per the letter written to the police, on March 25 at around 11 am, a mob of 150-200 lawyers, along with the President and General Secretary of the Bar Association, entered courtroom number 11, where the judge was sitting and started shouting slogans and started throwing the chair and table in the courtroom.
In his letter, ASJ Tondon asked the Kotwali police to immediately initiate an inquiry into the incident. Pursuant to his letter, an FIR has also been lodged against the accused advocates.
The alleged assault of ASJ Tondon is not the only incident of an attack on a member of the legal fraternity inside the court premises in the state.
Allahabad High Court’s ‘stern directions’ didn’t translate adequately on the ground. A member of the Allahabad High Court Bar Association, who didn’t want to be named, said that the situation is even worse at the trial courts. He said:
On 5 March 2021, the family and counsel of the 19-year-old Dalit girl who succumbed after being allegedly gang-raped by four Thakur men in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras complained that they were charged at and threatened in open court.
As per the affidavit submitted before the court, on 5 March, during the hearing of the case in a special court in Hathras, an advocate named Tarun Hari Sharma stormed into the courtroom and charged at the applicant and the complainant counsel, shouting and issuing threats.
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