JUDGMENT

Bennet, J. - This case against Mr. B, advocate of Ghazipur, was sent to the Bar Council for an enquiry and the Bar Council framed the following two charges : (1) That you, Mr. B, carried on a business in partnership with others, but took steps not to disclose your connection as a partner and thereby committed professional misconduct. (2) That in the suit, out of which F.A. 481 of 1929 arose, you denied that you were a partner, which denial was held not to be true both by the Subordinate Judge and the Hon'ble High Court, and your conduct in the said suit disclosed that you took steps to make out that you were a creditor, which was also found to be untrue, and by such action you were guilty of professional misconduct.

2. The Bar Council conducted an enquiry and heard evidence on both sides and have come to a conclusion as follows:

Our conclusions therefore are that Mr. B was never a partner but had advanced Rs. 2,000 as a loan to Harnandan Prasad, that his defence in suit No. 85 of 1928 was true, that the charges against him are not proved and that he is not guilty of any professional misconduct.

3. Against this conclusion the learned Government Advocate has filed two objections as follows : (1) That the finding of the Tribunal is against the weight of evidence on the record. (2) That the Tribunal has erred in going behind the finding of the High Court in First Appeal No. 481 of 1928.

4. This finding of the High Court was to the effect that Mr. B was a partner in the business in question. We will first dispose of this point of law. The learned Government Advocate relied on two rulings for his proposition. One of these is reported in In the matter of Bajendro Nath Mukerji (1900) 22 All. 49. In that it was held by their Lordships that the High Court was correct in deciding that the propriety in law or in fact of the conviction maintained by the Court of appeal could not be brought into question and that it was final and that the appellant could not argue that he did not fraudulently or dishonestly use a copy of the decree as he had been convicted of doing. The learned Government Advocate also referred to In the matter of an Advocate 1934 Rang. 33. In that case an advocate had been convicted u/s 177, Penal Code, of furnishing an Income Tax return which he knew to be incorrect. On the other hand in Muni Reddi v. K. Venkata Row 1914 Mad. 512, a Full Bench laid down that the judgment and evidence given in the civil suit filed by a party against the pleader was admissible as evidence in an enquiry against the pleader under the Legal Practitioners Act, but the judgment and evidence was not conclusive proof in the enquiry. It appears to us that a distinction is to be drawn between the judgment in a criminal case and the judgment in a civil case where these judgments are produced in an enquiry against a legal practitioner. In the case of a criminal conviction the Court is making an enquiry as to whether the character of the legal practitioner is such that he should be allowed to remain on the rolls. In this enquiry the proceedings are of a criminal or quasi-criminal nature. The Evidence Act, Section 54, provides as follows:

In criminal proceedings the fact that the accused person has a bad character is irrelevant, unless evidence has been given that he has a good character, in which case it becomes relevant.

Explanation 1. - This section does not apply to cases in which the bad character of any person is itself a fact in issue.

Explanation 2. - A previous conviction is relevant as evidence of bad character.

5. In our opinion the case we are supposing would be one in which be bad character of the legal practitioner was itself a fact in issue and therefore a previous conviction would be relevant as evidence of bad character under Explanations 1 and 2. The fact that a man had been convicted therefore would be relevant evidence and the grounds on which he had been convicted could not be called into question. But when we come to a civil decree