Tamil Nadu lawyers to boycott courts Monday

Salem (Tamil Nadu), Sep 6 : Lawyers in Tamil Nadu will boycott courts Monday to protest strict rules for bail bonds, their association decided here Saturday.

The lawyers are protesting "stifling rules" prescribed by the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court governing bail bonds.

About 60,000 members of the Federation of Advocates' Associations of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will boycott courts Monday, its president M. Paramasivam told reporters.

The boycott will hit at least 15,000 hearings in the state and the neighbouring union territory.

"The bench has announced a strange set of rules for provision of bail bonds in criminal cases that will place all types of litigants and lawyers alike into hardship. To protest against this, we will observe a day's boycott of the courts Monday initially. If the courts do not see reason, other forms of protests will be announced," Paramasivam added.

Judicial sources, however, denied these charges.

"On any given day, dozens of suspects are let off on bail and a sizeable percentage amongst them never attend courts again because they jump bail. And such suspects include arms smugglers and drug peddlers," a court official said on phone from the capital Chennai - 300 km away to the northeast.

--IANS