Strong bonds with Thalassery where Krishna Iyer began his legal career

The District and Sessions Court here was where V.R. Krishna Iyer began his career as a young lawyer and this seaside town always treated him as one of its own.

Senior members of the Thalassery Bar recalled that whenever he visited Thalassery, he used to say that he was overwhelmed by his memories of the town.

The majestic house he had built near the court here and the Sharada Krishna Iyer auditorium, built in memory of his late wife, had kept alive for him his ties with the town.

Mr. Krishna Iyer used to live in the house till he moved to Thiruvananthapuram to join the E.M.S. Namboodiripad-led Ministry, the State’s first.

“The most beautiful scene I had ever seen in my life was from that house,” he had recalled in an article published in a souvenir released on the occasion of the bicentenary celebrations of the Thalassery court in 2002. The house was later transferred to the Thalassery diocese to house the Bishop’s House. His “memory is vivid about those wonderful salubrious scenes and happy days,” he wrote about his days here.

IUML leader and former Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed, who had practised as lawyer at the Thalassery court, in his article in the souvenir recalls that legal luminaries like Mr. Krishna Iyer added to the stature of the Thalassery Bar.

Mr. Krishna Iyer also had close political ties with Thalassery. He had been elected to the Madras Assembly from here in 1952 and to the Kerala Assembly in 1957.

Mr. Krishna Iyer was unique because he had served all the three pillars of democracy, namely the judiciary, legislature, and the executive, says T. Asaf Ali, Director General of Prosecutions, who had earlier practised in the court here.