Following the Karnataka High Court’s judgment upholding the restriction of Hijab in educational institutions, a social media post accompanying a video of the Chief Judge reprimanding a lawyer for hiding material evidence is being widely shared with a claim that Karnataka High Court stripped the lawyer who defended the petitioners of the hijab case. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals showing Karnataka High Court Judge stripping the lawyer, who defended the petitioners of Hijab case.
Fact: The viral visuals actually show Karnataka High Court proceedings dated 03 March 2022, much before the hijab judgment was pronounced. The proceedings were related to a commercial appeal and not the hijab case. Moreover, the CJ did not strip off the lawyer as claimed in the viral post but spared the advocate taking his age into consideration. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
In order to instill transparency, the Karnataka High Court live streams its proceedings on its official YouTube channel. Upon examining the videos of court proceedings available on the channel, we came across a video on this channel that carried similar visuals as shown in the viral post.
As per the description of the video, the video shows the court proceedings of 03 March 2022 whereas the judgment of the Hijab case was pronounced on 15 March 2022. This means the viral visuals are available much before the judgment for the hijab case is delivered.
From the viral visuals and also from the above-mentioned court proceeding visuals, it is evident that it is Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi who is chairing the bench.
Search on the Karnataka High Court website using the details obtained from the above-mentioned video, we accessed the judgment copy related to the viral visuals, wherein the Chief Justice reprimanded an advocate.
From the judgment copy, it is evident that the proceedings are related to a commercial appeal and not the hijab case. As per the judgment the name of the advocate who got reprimanded by the CJ is G. Sanjay. However, he is not among the advocates who represented the petitioners in the hijab case. The group of advocates who represented the petitioners in the hijab case can be viewed below.
Further, the Chief Justice did not strip off the advocate as claimed in the viral post. As per the Judgement, the court spared the advocate taking this young age into consideration.
To sum it up, Karnataka High Court Chief Justice reprimanding an advocate in a case related to commercial appeal is passed off as him stripping of the advocate representing the petitioners in the hijab case.
