Bofors: Advocate interested in cheap publicity, says court

He is interested in getting "cheap publicity" and has "wasted" precious judicial hours, a Delhi Court on Friday said about lawyer Ajay Agrawal who has been pursuing Bofors payoff case for years in various courts.

New Delhi: He is interested in getting "cheap
publicity" and has "wasted" precious judicial hours, a Delhi
Court on Friday said about lawyer Ajay Agrawal who has been
pursuing Bofors payoff case for years in various courts.
"Agrawal is interested in attaining cheap publicity by
going to mediapersons after every date of hearing and playing
trumpet of corruption in this case by public servants,
contrary to the judgments already passed by Delhi High Court
by supplementing his own views about the case," Chief
Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav said.

The judge, while making the remarks against the advocate,
said "this court during the course of hearing, on various
dates noticed that on the succeeding day of each date of
hearing, there would be newspaper reports about the arguments
advanced in court by Agarwal and some of the reports were even
sensational, wherefrom it can be reasonably deduced that
Agarwal is interested in attaining cheap publicity".

The CMM said it was "depressing" to note that on account
of such proceedings before this court, "innumerable days were
wasted" , a time that otherwise could have been spent for the
disposal of cases of genuine litigants.

The court, which also questioned the bonafide of
Agrawal in pursuing the case, said "Agrawal`s only interest in
this opposition appears to be curiosity, obtaining the glare
of public and publicity, which are not valid grounds to have
‘locus-standi’.
At the same time, the court had a word of praise for the
lawyer as it said "this court is really thankful to Agrawal
for rendering valuable assistance to this court in taking this
court through the evidence collected by the investigating
agency."

The court also made remarks against Agrawal for placing
uncertified documents relating to the case and did not give
clear answer about the source who made them available to him.

"There is another interesting aspect in the matter. In
this case, Agrawal passed on copies of several bundle of
documents relating to this case, which were not certified
copies of the original record from the court. This court made
a pointed query to him to disclose the source of receipt of
those documents, to which Agrawal stated that somebody from
the office of CBI had left those documents at his office.

"Although, no issue on this point was joined by CBI
but this clearly shows that an attempt on the part of Agrawal
was made to have the possession of official documents without
following the process of law," the court said.

PTI

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