when you uh started out practice in Bombay who were your contemporaries who did you look up to at that time well amongst the youngsters um py was pyala was one he was a couple of years sen to me in age but not very much senior to me in the profession because I had you know started much earlier in life you know he was a bit of a Prodigy and and a very very successful Junior of course later on I came to know his great hold over economics when he used to make his annual budget speeches and uh that I realized long long after when when I attended one of his budget lectures at at the Cricket Club of India that was a place where he used to deliver lectures then there was Mr Chandra chur later on became the Chief Justice of India Lula Brothers s Krish Lula and Bal Krishan Lula very great lawyers one on the Civil side another on the criminal side there used to be Mr Abdul Rahman the I believe uh the grandfather of uh this lady who is now the minister in the PPP government in Pakistan what is her name I forget her name Sheri ran okay Sheri ran that's her name she's a very Charming young lady and very clever woman and she's Abdul raman's granddaughter and uh the daughter of Mr Hassan Ali was and with my friend and colleague so so these are some of the names that I can easily recall okay sir coming to the 1960s you led the prosecution in the nanavati trial tell us about the you know your involvement in criminal law how you entered criminal law ier I I entered criminal law from the very first day of my life in Karachi and I never specialized in criminal law yes the only thing is that a criminal case attracts great public attention because you know people get involved in the the in the criminal history of other people and from a from a lawyer's point of view when you argue a great point of constitutional law or simple law and make an intellectual success that's a greater achievement than get arguing a very celebrated murder case or celebrated case of so uh I mean I my father was a criminal lawyer my grandfather was a criminal lawyer so I have no difficulty in saying that I gravitated to the criminal s right from the beginning and it was in my jeans and I I did get involved in some very important cases right in the beginning of my career in in Bombay uh one of my friends who had got some very important Clans in some important de cases like at the mahalakshmi temple de the bank Den case now he was taken up in the administrative service so he told me that you do my work because I have taken fees from these people now I have no money to refund to them you'll do these cases free I said I'll certainly do this free for you don't worry about it I argued those cases and I became a famous jury lawyer in those days we used to have trial by jury which we abolished in the in the late I think early 60s or late 50s I forget now we abolished Judy trial but I became a famous jury trial lawyer so I have never looked back if you have to tell the story of jury trials how you prepared for jury trials to the lawyers of today well I you see to to argue a case before a jury a much much different kle of fish than then arguing before a judge there your eloquence your auditory your dramatics your um your understanding of human nature and the lay man's mind I mean this is something which you pick up by seeing great Masters you don't don't learn it in a classroom room and fortunately today Indian lawyer doesn't have to face a Judy trial so today it is a little little meaningless but I believe that that same thing to some extent is a great asset even when you are appearing before a judge after all a judge is also in a sense a juror except that he he thinks he's not but he is in some sense so but the heart of success and the legal profession is industry industry industry it is meant for people who work hard and are capable of putting that kind of work you'll be surprised one of the greatest jury lawyers of India in those days used to be as ASF Al was a husband of this socialist leader Aruna Aruna the husband the great lawyer and I saw him in action in Karachi when I was young came to defend um some Dr Abasi was supposed to have killed a Bo with whom he had some homosexual relations very very very great trial you know attracted lot of public attention and I used to attend that so Asaf when he qualified one of the stories which he used to tell us he went to the famous firm of Fredick poak and Mula in in London and tried to join that firm so he was interviewed and the old man there asked him he said Mr Al please tell me how many hours of work can you put in so po tried to strain the truth as much as he could and he said I could put at least about 10 12 hours every day and he looked at him listen I'm the oldest member of this firm I'm tce your age I put in 22 hours sometimes so but they gave him a job but the job that they gave him was that we receive most of our litigation in the P Council from the state of Tamil Nadu in those days Madras and the names of these clients are are jaw breaking so you better decipher these names for for us and tell us these spellings and the pronunciation of their names that's the first job that he got and he took it and then you see ultimately he rose to be great lawyer a great politician and a great great success there no question about and he was one of the most eloquent and he was a great cross examiner and it's the I don't I tell the legal profession that the art of cross examination is dead the trials hardly take place and the trials take place now that you don't have a jury trial the trials don't go on every day continuously you have one hearing today you another hearing after 3 months trials go on for years and years so that cross examination no longer exists and and and Justice does not depend merely on law it depends on fact and unfortunately in this country people lie a little more frequently than in other countries at least in in the countries in the west and you have to extract truth from very unwilling reluctant Witnesses be sure that when a witness SW I'll speak the truth nothing but the truth the whole truth you can by a look at him know that the rasal has come to speak a veloping lie then to get the truth out of him is a great art and that itself requires Great introspection and Industry which doesn't exist today at the bar all these young lawyers start practice directly in the Supreme Court they have never a single trial in their life so the profession is not in in that kind of trim shape as it should be very bad shap all right sir another facet of criminal trials as you pointed out is the uh media attention as an officer of the Court how do you insulate yourself from media attention also public opinion you see you don't have to isolate yourself from public opinion but do not allow what your conscience wants you to do and you are required to do according to your uh your understanding of professional obligations don't be influenced by adver public criticism otherwise I'm also in politics I can't be totally insensitive to opinion I I should be a very foolish politician if I don't take care of that but the media is becoming terribly invasive intrusive and I regret to say that that there there are cases of perversion of Justice miscarriage of Justice purely because of press action and in legal Theory they say it is jues who are influenced by media the judges are not but it's it's a FY biggest felly the judges are as human as any juror can be and however well trained they are be sure that they are influenced by the Press and I don't believe that the Press is doing a great job in reporting cases they become partisan sometimes become almost mean and cruel which ought to be avoided there have been terrible miscarriages of Justice because of the influence of the press otherwise lawyer should also like to be on the right side of the press the Press gives him publicity it advances him in his profession and don't tell me that the Press doesn't do that they do it do it for some consideration don't they yeah