intervew / NEWZFIRST

If giving legal opinion is a crime then all lawyers will be in jail: Shanvas By Sayed Isthiyakh5/11/12 You can be jailed for your legal opinion. This is the legal opinion now of human rights lawyer S. Shanvas of Thiruvananthapuram, who is accused of abetting an exposé against Kerala Police. He was arrested on May 1 and charged with conspiracy in the publication of Malayalam newspaper, Madhyamam’s scoop of January 21 reporting police surveillance of email IDs of 260 prominent people, about 250 of them Muslims. All Shanvas did was give his legal opinion to the newspaper reporter on his legal rights in publishing the story. Shanvas spoke to Sayed Isthiyakh of Newzfirst after his release from prison on bail. What is the case against you? This must be the first time in India’s history that a lawyer has been jailed for tendering his legal opinion in a case as per the law of land. Actually, it is the police who have violated the law – committing no less than 269 emails. The police illegally hacked the emails mostly of Muslims. But they have painted me as a conspirator only because I gave legal advice to a journalist friend. What did you argue in the court? I stressed before the magistrate that giving legal advice is part of our profession. If advocates are held responsible for giving legal opinion and then the profession itself will become illegal and everybody will be jailed by the police. What is your opinion of the police hacking of the emails? If the police hack an email ID, then isn’t it possible for them to send emails from that ID to anyone they want and then claim that they were sent by the ID’s owner? That is why cyber laws have clearly identified hacking as unlawful. What happens next in the case? I will file a case against the police for harassing me and causing damaging my reputation. I will seek action against the police for forcing me to part with the passwords for the three email accounts I operate. Being an advocate how did you feel to be in jail? Merely by being sent in police or judicial custody does not make one an offender. There is little awareness of this. As for being in the jail, I could see that anyone who lands in jail accidentally would be vulnerable to being influenced by the professional criminals there instead of being reformed there