Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. (For himself and on behalf of Desai J.) :- We agree wholly with our learned brother Sen J., that the appellant is guilty of gross professional misconduct and deserves condign punishment. But conventional penalties have their punitive limitations and flaws, viewed from the reformatory angle. A therapeutic touch, a correctional twist, and a locus penitentiae, may have rehabilitative impact, if only we may experiment unorthodoxly but within the parameters of the law. Oriented on this approach and adopting the finding of guilt, we proceed to consider the penalty, assuming the need for innovation and departing from wooden traditionalism.

2. A middle-aged man, advocate by profession, has grossly misconducted himself and deceived a common client. Going by precedent, the suspension from practice for one year was none too harsh. Sharp practice by members of noble professions deserves even disbarment. The wages of sin is death.

3. Even so, justice has a correctional edge, a socially useful function, especially when the delinquent is too old to be pardoned and too young to be disbarred. Therefore, a curative, not cruel punishment has to be designed in the social setting of the legal profession.

4. Law is a noble profession, true; but it is also an elitist profession. Its ethics, in practice, (not in theory, though) leave much to be desired, if viewed as a profession for the people. When the Constitution under Art. 19 enables professional expertise to enjoy a privilege and the Advocates Act confers a monopoly, the goal is not assured income but commitment to the people-the common people whose hunger, privation and hamstrung human rights need the advocacy of the profession to change the existing order into a Human Tomorrow. This desideratum gives the clue to the direction of the penance of a deviant geared to correction. Serve the people free and expiate your sin, is the hint.

5. Laws nobility as a profession lasts only so long as the members maintain their commitment to integrity and service to the community. Indeed, the monopoly conferred on the legal profession by Parliament is couples with a responsibility - a responsibility towards the people, especially the poor. Viewed from this angle, every delinquent who deceives his common client deserves to be frowned upon. This approach makes it a reproach to reduce the punishment, as pleaded by learned counsel for the appellant.

6. But, as we have explained at the start, every punishment, however, has a functional duality-deterrence and correction. Punishment for professional misconduct is no exception to this social justice test. In the present case, therefore, from the punitive angle, the deterrent component persuades us not to interfere with the suspension from practice reduced benignly at the appellate level to one year. From the correctional angle, a gesture from the Court may encourage the appellant to turn a new page. He is not too old to mend his ways. He has suffered a litigative ordeal, but more importantly he has a career ahead. To give him an opportunity to rehabilitate himself by changing his ways, resisting temptations and atoning for the serious delinquency, by a more zealous devotion to peoples causes like legal aid to the poor, may be a step in the correctional direction.

7. Can these goals be accommodated within the scheme of the statute? Benignancy beyond the bounds of law are not for judges to try.

8. Speaking frankly, S. 35 (3) has a mechanistic texture, a set of punitive pigeon-holes, but we may note that words grow in content with time and circumstance, that phrases are flexible in semantics, that the printed text is a set of vessels into which the court may pour appropriate judicial meaning. That statute is sick which is allergic to change in sense which the times demand and the text does not countermand. That court is superficial which stops with the cognitive and declines the creative function of construction. So, we take the view that quarrying more