- (1.) The appellant is Shri Lalit Mohan Das, a pleader of about 25 years standing, who ordinarily practised in the Courts at Anandapur in the district of Mayurbhanj in Orissa. The Munsif of Anandapur, one Shri L. B. N. S. Deo, drew up a proceeding under Ss. 13 and 14 of the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879 against the pleader for grossly improper conduct in the discharge of his professional duty and submitted a report to the High Court through the District Judge of Mayurbhanj on December 12, 1953. The District Judge forwarded the report, accompanied by his opinion, to the High Court of Orissa on March 9, 1954. The recommendation of the Munsif was that the pleader should be suspended from practice for one year. The reference was heard by the High Court of Orissa, and by its order dated March 15, 1955 the High Court came to the conclusion that the pleader was guilty of grave professional misconduct and suspended him from practice for a period of five years with effect from, March 15, 1955.
(2.) Shri Lalit Mohan Das then obtained special leave from this Court to appeal against the judgment and order of the Orissa High Court dated the 15th / 23rd March 1955. He also filed a petition under Art. 32 of the Constitution. Learned counsel for the petitioner has not pressed the petition under Art. 32 and nothing more need be said about it. We proceed now to deal with the appeal which has been brought to this Court on special leave.
(3.) The charges against the appellant were the following. On July 15, 1953 the appellant was appearing on behalf of the defendant in Suit No. 81 of 1952 pending before the Munsif of Anandapur. On that date, there were two other suits pending before the same Munsif. There were petitions for time in all the three suits. The Munsif wanted to take up the oldest suit for hearing, and the oldest suit being Suit No. 54 of 1952, it was taken up first and five witnesses for the plaintiff were examined. Suit No. 81 of 1952 was postponed to August 18, 1953. The appellant, who appeared for the defendant in that suit, was informed of the postponement. When so informed, the appellant made a remark in open Court and within the hearing of the Munsif to this effect: "If the Peshkar is gained over, he can do everything". He then left the Court. The Munsif was surprised at the remark made and asked the appellant to explain his conduct, by means of a letter sent the same day. As the appellant sent no reply, the Munsif wrote again to the appellant on, July 18, 1953. To this letter the appellant sent the following reply; "Dear Sir, I am painfully constrained to receive memo after memo for some imaginary act of mine not in any way connected with my affairs for which if any explanation is at all warranted officially. For your second memo I felt it desirable as gentleman to reply. Further I may request you, to be more polite while addressing letters to lawyers. Yours faithfully, Sd. L. M. Das, Pleader". It is obvious that the letter of the appellant was couched in very improper terms and considerably strained the relation between the Munsif and the appellant. The appellant, it may be stated here, was at that time the President of the Anandpur Sub-Divisional Bar Association which consisted of about 14 legal practitioners. On July 21, 1953, Shri B. Raghava Rao, who was the predecessor in office of Shri Deo, came to Anandapur. He was the guest of Shri A. V. Ranga Rao, the Sub-Divisional Officer. One Shri N.C. Mohanty a pleader of Anandapur and who was related to the appellant, came to invite the two Munsifs to a luncheon on the occasion of a house warming ceremony. On hearing about the trouble between Shri Deo and the appellant, Shri B. Raghava Rao interceded and it appears that the appellant was persuaded to come to the house of the Sub- Divisional Officer and to say that he was sorry for what had happened in Court on July 15, 1953 and that he did not mean to insult Shri Deo; Shri Deo, it appears, accepted the apology and for the time being the trouble between the two was smoothed over. ;