Jharkhand High Court

Ranchi, Jan. 19: The Jharkhand State Bar Council terminated the licence to practice of yet another advocate on charges of professional misconduct here today. A disciplinary committee of the council struck off the name of advocate Rajeev Kumar and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000.

The disciplinary panel comprising advocates Mahesh Tiwary, H.K. Mahto and Prabir Chatterjee delivered the judgment holding Kumar, a high court practitioner, guilty of misconduct and breach of trust reposed by his client.

On January 7, the committee had passed barred advocates Ritu Kumar and Rajendra Krishna from practising after finding them guilty of professional misconduct.

Rajeev was one of the lawyers who had assisted Ritu Kumar in handling Durga Oraon’s public interest litigation seeking a CBI probe into the disproportionate assets of former chief minister Madhu Koda and his colleagues.

The complaint against Rajeev was registered before the council by one Raj Kumar, who alleged that the former had misled him in filing a criminal case against AYUSH director Suresh Prasad Sinha and several other officials of the health department for irregularities in appointment of AYUSH doctors.

The advocate had drafted a complaint petition on behalf of Raj, to be filed before the vigilance special judge. However, Rajeev withdrew the complaint and told his client that the case had been withdrawn due to technical flaws.

Subsequently, the advocate filed a fresh complaint on behalf of Raj, but excluded the name of former health secretary Pradeep Kumar, an accused in the first petition.

Despite repeated queries by his client, Rajeev kept dilly-dallying and made changes on a page in the petition that had Pradeep’s name in the list of accused. Raj knew he had been cheated and suspected the advocate of striking a deal with the administrative officer to remove the latter’s name.

The council started its disciplinary proceedings on July 24, 2009, which was later challenged by Rajeev before the high court. The court, however, rejected his petition on June 28 last year.

Rajeev then defended himself claiming Raj Kumar had taken a friendly loan of Rs 1.5 lakh from him and issued a receipt. When asked, the complainant refused to return his money and lodged the case against him, he argued.

Rajeev could not be contacted for comments.