Chennai: Alleging sexual harassment by a practising lawyer, a final year professional course student has approached Madras high court seeking a direction to the Bar Council of TN and Puducherry to take action against the lawyer. It was her case that she approached the lawyer to initiate legal action against a 67-year-old businessman for rape. But the lawyer himself started abusing her, demanding sexual favours.
Admitting the plea on Thursday, a division bench of Justice S M Subramaniam and Justice M Jothiraman directed the Bar council to explain the action it had taken on the complaint.
When the plea came up for hearing, advocate A P Suryaprakasam alleged that the Coimbatore police exposed the name and identity of the survivor in the public domain, violating guidelines set by the Supreme Court in this regard.
The bench also suo motu impleaded the Coimbatore commissioner of police and the deputy commissioner of Coimbatore south to explain the alleged violation.
The court also directed police to provide protection to the victim from any external threat.
According to the survivor, she got acquainted with a man named Anandhakrishnan in Nov 2022, as he promised to allot her work to design the interiors of his newly constructed property. On Jan 16, 2023, he invited her to a birthday party organised at his house to meet his daughter and other family members. However, when she visited, there was no one in the house. The man told her that other guests would come soon as the cake was supposed to be cut only at midnight.
While she was waiting, he offered her coffee laced with sedatives, which made her drowsy. Using the opportunity, he raped her and threatened to release the video of the act on social media if she approached police, she said. She contacted lawyer Manojpandi seeking legal assistance.
However, after dragging the issue for a few days, the advocate also started demanding sexual favours from her, she added.
As the Bar Council failed to act on her complaint against the lawyer, the woman approached the Madras high court.