Even as four advocates, including general secretary of Advocates' Association, Bangalore, A.P. Ranganath, were remanded to judicial custody for their alleged role in the violence that rocked the city civil court on Friday, the police are on the lookout for more advocates.
Sources said that most of the 25 advocates, whose identity has been established, have gone absconding.
The sources also said that most of the advocates had switched off their mobile phones.
Efforts are under way to trace their whereabouts, the police said.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) T. Suneel Kumar sought to clarify certain unconfirmed reports in the electronic media claiming more advocates have been arrested by the police.
“We questioned some people. There have been no arrests,” he said.
While the State Government tries to bring about a rapprochement between advocates and journalists, tempers, it appears, are yet to die down.
The crew of a Kannada television channel was chased by a group of lawyers at the Victoria Hospital where Mr. Ranganath was taken for a medical check-up before being sent to the Parappana Agrahara Central Prison on Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, advocates, who felt that the media has failed to tell their side of the story, chose to vent their ire on social media.
While lawyers shared videos that they had captured of what they called “police atrocities against advocates”, a few Facebook pages and groups were created to allow advocates to tell their side of the story.
Photographs of advocates injured, bleeding and undergoing treatment in hospital were widely shared.
While many messages and comments were against the police, a large number of messages were also about the alleged bias in television reportage of the event.
Videos
On YouTube, about half a dozen videos, shot on low resolution mobile cameras, have been uploaded.
Most of the videos are unclear, though taglines claim that the footage shows policemen vandalising cars and bikes on the court premises.
