Veteran lawyer Karpal Singh has raised his sword at the Bar Council, challenging its stand that it cannot act against lawyers where their personal lives are concerned.

Giving a reminder that the legal profession is one which should hold the public's confidence and be held in high esteem, Karpal - also the DAP chairperson - said that the Bar Council should do more in sieving out the bad hats.

"Any advocate and solicitor whose private live brings the legal profession into disrepute ought not to be included in the rolls. It is the Bar Council which should spring into action whenever there is evidence of the private life of a lawyer is such that it would bring the legal profession into contempt and disrepute.

"The Bar Council cannot, and should not, ignore such conduct," he said in a statement issued yesterday.

Karpal said ( right ) Section 94(3) of the Legal Profession Act brings misconduct in private life within striking range.

The lawyer of 41 years also chided the Bar for being lax even there is mounting evidence of improper conduct in the personal life of members.

"There is a clear case of an advocate and solicitor presently on the rolls whose private life was impugned by the Court of Appeal which found as a fact that he was the male actor in a pornographic tape.

"However, the Bar Council has sat back mute and oblivious to the need to cleanse the rolls of this contamination," said Karpal in a clear reference to former Dewan Rakyat deputy speaker DP Vijandran.

Vijandran, who was also former MIC secretary-general, is a practising lawyer to date.

Need to maintain pristine image

Karpal also said that lawyers convicted and imprisoned should only be readmitted to the Bar under very exceptional circumstances to "maintain a pristine image of the Bar which could attract public confidence.

He then called upon the Bar not to exempt the private life of lawyers from facing the music when there is evidence of misconduct.

For a professional like that, he said the line between public and private life is a very thin one,, adding that the courts too should ensure that the readmission to the rolls of one convicted of dishonesty is allowed only under extremely exceptional cases.

"This is the only way to ensure that the purity and integrity of the profession is not compromised. The public interest demands that this be so."

The Bar had been on the receiving end of brickbats from the Federal Territory branch of right-wing Malay rights NGO Pekida which blamed it for the killing of cosmetics queen Sosilawati Lawiya's and her three companions.

Pekida had laid the responsibility for the murders on the Bar by allowing bad hats to continue practising law.

The main suspects in the case are two lawyers from Banting, Selangor.

To that, council president Ragunath Kesavan ( left ) had, on Tuesday, insisted that any criminal conduct that falls outside the scope of a lawyer's professional practice is beyond the Bar's jurisdiction.