Ex-HC judge faces lawyers' protest over Dalit murder verdict

A section of lawyers today raised slogans against retired High Court Chief Justice L Narasimha Reddy while he was delivering a lecture on B R Ambedkar here, leading him to leave the venue midway.
The lawyers were objecting to his presence at the seminar in light of a verdict delivered by a division bench headed by him in a case related to killing of Dalits.
Reddy, who retired as Chief Justice of Patna High Court, was speaking at a seminar on "Dr B R Ambedkar's Clamour for National Integrity", organised by the local bar association at the District Court premises here.

Reddy was referring to a speech given by Ambedkar on November 25, 1949, when all of a sudden, a section of lawyers raised slogans against him.
These lawyers asked Reddy to "stop his speech" and "go out", saying he had no right to speak on Ambedkar as he had acquitted accused in the Chundur Dalits murder case.
They were referring to a verdict given by the Reddy- headed Division Bench of Andhra Pradesh HC in 2014.

A visibly annoyed Reddy stepped down from the dais and left the seminar venue. However, the protesting lawyers blocked his car by sitting on a dharna in front of it.

Bar association officials intervened and Reddy left the court premises in another car.
Later, talking to PTI, Reddy criticised the advocates for their behaviour and termed the incident as very sad and unfortunate.
Referring to the Chundur verdict, he said "it was a judgement given by a Division Bench. We heard the case for nearly 15 days and given its sensitivity, I asked the Special Public Prosecutor 'do you have any objection because I am a Reddy. The Special Public prosecutor said 'no objection'."
"We delivered our judgement to the best of our ability and it is now pending in the Supreme Court. A Judge cannot satisfy every section."

It may be recalled that eight Dalits were murdered at Chundur village in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh in August 1991.
A Special Court, in August 2007, acquitted 123 out of the 179 accused named in the case. It sentenced 21 accused to life imprisonment and awarded one-year rigorous jail term to the 35 others.
The convicts went in appeal in the HC and the Bench headed by Reddy and also comprising Justice M S K Jaiswal later acquitted all of them.