PRAYAGRAJ, July 21 -- Taking a serious note of lawyers with criminal antecedents, the Allahabad high court has directed that all criminal cases registered against advocates across the state be transferred from the district where they practice to a geographically proximate, but professionally insulated transferee district. "The transferee district shall be at a distance of not more than 100 km from the home district of the advocate. This distance ensures that the advocate's professional network and personal influence do not extend materially to the transferee district," the court said. "While carving out the principle of 100 km, it has been kept in mind that the advocates involved, as well as the witnesses in criminal cases, should not face any hardship, and that the distance should not become an impediment in defending the cases", the court added. "Law dies twice, once when its officers turn criminal, and again when Judges choose silence over judicial courage. In both cases, the rule of law is the first casualty," it observed. Justice Vinod Diwakar, while declining any relief to Mahammad Kafeel of Etawah, an advocate, directed to list the matter on August 20 for reporting compliance with the order. "In several Bar Associations- most notably in Gorakhpur and Kanpur- office-bearing positions are held by individuals with established criminal records. Furthermore, in nearly every district court, organised gangs of law graduates registered with the bar councils have entrenched themselves for the purpose of executing court decrees, resolving disputes outside the court through coercive means, intimidating vulnerable litigants, and actively carrying out the forcible eviction of tenants and property occupants", the court noted. "It is also a matter of grave concern that the judges of the district courts have, by and large, refrained from taking any decisive action in such matters- or have chosen not to acknowledge the gravity of the problem- owing, it appears, to a belief that these socially and politically motivated gangs of law graduates enjoy protection from the pressure groups and centres of social and political power-brokerage," the court observed in its June 3 order which was uploaded on the Allahabad high court website on July 17. The high court also expressed dissatisfaction over the report submitted by the UP Bar Council, which identified only 105 lawyers out of five lakh registered advocates who got themselves enrolled through fake degrees. "It must be noted at the outset that this list of merely 105 advocates, compiled by the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh as part of the verification exercise directed by the Supreme Court of India and the High Power Committee constituted for that purpose, appears to be no more than a token and superficial exercise," the court said. "Given the enormous size of the enrolled advocate population in Uttar Pradesh- one of the largest in the country- the identification of only 105 advocates with fake qualifications, after a state-wide verification drive, is wholly disproportionate to the scale of the problem that realistically exists," it added....