Senior Lawyers: Don’t hold your cards close to your chest

To rise in the legal profession, lawyers must spend time reading the legal literature from the world. Their seniors must also share their knowledge and insights. Juniors are the bar's future and must aim their highest to excel, writes JUSTICE YATINDRA SINGH, former chief justice of the Chhattisgarh High Court.

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MY legal career began in 1973 in Banda, where my grandfather, Keshav Chandra Singh Chaudhary, practised during his lifetime. Two of my uncles, Yogendra and Gyanendra Kumar Singh Chaudhary, were still practising there. I moved to Kanpur a year later to work with barrister Narendrajit Singh. I shifted to the Allahabad High Court in 1975 to find my father arrested under the Defence of India Rules (DIR). Even though he got bail, the state detained him under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

Emergency was a challenging time, not only for my family but the nation. Being a sufferer, I knew the problems of the detainees and started doing their cases free of cost. I got plenty of them. An incident occurred during this period, sometime in 1976, when I was arguing one such case. But first, a brief sketch of the late SC Khare.

Khare did his schooling at Allahabad. He graduated in science, did his post-graduation in botany and studied law at the University of Allahabad. His practice began at the District Court Allahabad and shifted to the High Court in 1953. As in studies, he made his mark in the legal field too. He rose to prominence with the Dr Ram Manohar Lohia case.

Dr Lohia was arrested and prosecuted under section 3 of the UP Special Powers Act, 1932, for making two speeches favouring a farmer's agitation against a hike in the irrigation cess. A habeas corpus petition was filed questioning the validity of the section and for his release. Khare had a science background: language was not his forte. Yet, those present in the court have narrated how he opened with great deliberation.

'An archaic, rusted, and obsolete law in the armoury of the State has been applied to stifle the most fundamental of all freedoms–the freedom of speech,' he told the court in the Ram Manohar Lohia case.

His opponent was the unmatched orator, then Advocate General late Kanhaiya Lal Mishra, the best lawyer in the country. In defence of the state, he began, "If the law applied is archaic, rusted, and obsolete, then this court is archaic, the legal system is rusted and the reports are obsolete that so readily invoked by my worthy friend."