At least 15 persons were injured when lawyers and journalists clashed on the district court premises here on Thursday.
A court boycott by district lawyers to protest “journalist aggression” against their colleagues in the High Court in Kochi on Wednesday erupted into violence when news reporters loudly objected to the “defamatory posters” they found pasted on the glass walls of the media room in the magistrate court complex.
Harsh verbal exchanges between the two groups soon escalated into rough physical altercations.
Matters took a turn for the worse when the news of the confrontation was looped over and over on news channels.
The scrolls brought more people to the scene, mostly lawyers, journalists, local people and politicians.
A section of lawyers prevented mediapersons from entering the complex. Journalists, mostly television news teams, dared the ban by making occasional forays into the complex with cameras and mikes held.
The main grouse of lawyers was that the journalists had overstepped their professional bounds and brazenly challenged them in their workplace on their protest day. Many lawyers also felt the media coverage of the incident was heavily biased against them.
Sit-in staged
Journalist union leaders said that a set of “inebriated lawyers” had started the trouble. Pointing to shards of broken glass, they said they were pelted with rocks and empty liquor bottles.
Journalists trooped out of the court precincts and staged in a sit-in outside the main gate.
Lawyers gathered in strength inside. The police closed the gate and deployed in strength, forming a buffer between the agitating lawyers and newsmen. Intermittent stone-throwing marked the protest.
V.S. Sivakumar, MLA, and V. Sivankutty, ex-MLA, brokered peace by making both groups to agree to a police inquiry into the violence.
Thiruvananthapuram Bar Association president K.P. Jayachandran said both groups should rectify their mistakes and move forward.
