The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : New laws needed to combat new types of crime: Venkatapathy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 18, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

New laws needed to combat new types of crime: Venkatapathy

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, OCT. 17. New laws are needed to tackle new types of crimes and the Law Ministry is working on this, Union Minister of State for Law and Justice K. Venkatapathy said today.

Speaking to presspersons here, Mr. Venkatapaty said the focus was on curbing video piracy, trademark violations and activities that damage the ecology. ``Activities that cause harm to the environment in turn affect society. Therefore there is a need for laws to prevent fresh types of crimes on this front.''

The Minister said efforts would be made for facilitating arguing of cases in Tamil in the Madras High Court. A lot of groundwork had to be done for this; for instance, with judges from other States appointed to the High Court, arguments in Tamil would have to be interpreted in English

Human rights

Earlier, addressing the State Conference of the All-India Lawyers' Union (AILU), Mr. Venkatapathy said lawyers should strive to protect human rights. Emphasising the need for lawyers to keep themselves abreast of developments, he said the nature of crime had changed because of technological development. From just criminal, civil and human rights cases, there were exclusive benches now to deal with environmental problems. Besides, there were laws to deal with cyber crimes.

Apart from constant reading, lawyers would have to be information technology savvy. ``One can get details of latest judgments on the Internet. And, that is one way of learning fast.'' Stressing clarity of thought and expression while arguing cases, he regretted the lack of fluency, both in Tamil and English, among lawyers. ``At least be fluent in one of these,'' he said. ``Let not poor language be a hurdle in your career or to the objective of ensuring for social justice.''

Mr. Venkatapathy said it was heartrending to note that many young lawyers did not get enough cases. He assured the AILU that he would pass on to his Ministry its demand for Rs.2,000 as monthly assistance to young lawyers. (A resolution to this effect was passed at the conference on the grounds that unlike in many other fields, fresh law graduates could not start with a lucrative practice.)

However, at the same time, the Minister said young lawyers should not reach a stage where they had to go to police stations in search of cases. On opening more law colleges, the Minister said the Government did not want the number of lawyers to exceed that of litigants.

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