New Delhi: The Telangana Advocates Protection Act, a law meant to shield legal professionals from violence, intimidation, harassment, and retaliatory criminal proceedings, came into force Tuesday, following a notification issued by the state’s law department.
The notification brings into operation a legislation that was passed unanimously by the Telangana Legislative Assembly earlier this year.
The law requires authorities to provide police protection to advocates facing a credible threat arising from the performance of professional duties. This protection extends to circumstances involving intimidation, coercion or threat of violence. Families of advocates are also entitled to protection against threats directed at them.
Advocates will also be protected from false criminal cases potentially filed in retaliation, directing police to secure the express approval of a judicial magistrate before taking action against an accused advocate.
The Act follows years of efforts by Telangana lawyers to have such a bill passed. Calls for specific protections began after highly publicized incidents like the 2021 murder of lawyers Gattu Vaman Rao and his wife, P.V. Nagamani, who were known for using Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to challenge local corruption.
Calls intensified last year after an assault on local lawyer Bandaru Suresh Babu. The attack, caught on CCTV, was called out by local bar associations as ‘targeted’. In response, advocates staged a protest outside the High Court in Hyderabad last September.
The Act establishes a dedicated mechanism through which advocates may raise their concerns. State officials have said that the system intends to provide a formal institutional response to concerns that were previously addressed only through ad hoc interventions by bar associations and courts.
Introducing the legislation, Telangana Legislative Affairs Minister, D. Sridhar Babu stated that protecting advocates was essential to preserving the rule of law and ensuring confidence in the justice delivery system. The government described the Act as both a safety measure and an affirmation of the independence of the legal profession.
The Act brings the list of states having specific protections for legal professionals to three.
Rajasthan passed an Advocates Protection Bill in 2023; a similar law came into force in Karnataka in 2024. Both these acts explicitly criminalised attacks on advocates and required punishment and compensation.
The Telangana Act, however, goes significantly further than either of these. While based on the same framework, it broadens and extends the protections. For instance, the Act’s safeguards against false or retaliatory criminal accusations are not found in the laws passed in either Rajasthan or Karnataka. Provisions for police protection and protection against coercive police action are new as well.
The Telangana Act also greatly widens an advocate’s options for recourse. It explicitly requires grievance redressal committees to be constituted at multiple levels to oversee complaints and serve as a first resort for reparatory action.
Finally, it broadens the definition of an ‘attack’. Where the previous Acts restrict ‘attacks’ to the physical, the Telangana Act includes mental harassment, cyber attacks, pressure, interference, and attempts to intimidate advocates’ family members, among other things.
In effect, the Telangana Act views any interference with an advocate’s work as an attack on the justice system itself. It hopes to create a multi-layered protection system, supported by administrative structures and specific police orders, that will defend advocates from an entire spectrum of possible hostile action.
It also hews much closer to the broad protections envisioned by lawyers themselves. Many of the Act’s principles, especially its expansive definition of the word ‘attack,’ were inspired by a 2021 draft legislation written by the Bar Council of India as a model for states to frame their own laws.
Calls for such broad protections for advocates are not new. Multiple state bar associations have made similar pleas over the last few years, in response to what some lawyers see as an increasing pattern of targeted attacks.
In 2023, Delhi lawyers raised concerns after the shocking murder of advocate Virender Narwal, supposedly over a property dispute. Advocates approached the Delhi High Court seeking to direct the state government to frame a bill. By May 2025, a proposed bill draft was pending deliberation. Though the Court directed the government to expedite its enactment, no legislation has yet been passed.
More alarm was raised in April 2025 after an almost fatal attack on Bengaluru lawyer Y.R. Sadashiva Reddy, a co-chairman of the Bar Council of India.
Similarly, members of the Andhra Pradesh Bar Federation urged the state government in late 2025 to introduce comparable legislation.
Calls for a central law have also gained momentum in recent years, with the Bar Council of India backing a nationwide framework based on their 2021 draft bill. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said in 2025 that the Law Commission was actively working on proposals for an Advocates Protection Act. “I have spoken to the Cabinet about further amendments to the Advocates Act, and we will sit with bar representatives as well,” he had said.
Sahaj Sankaran is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Niyati Kothiyal)
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The following is not there in telangana advocates acts :
The following is wrong : don’t write misleading. Read the original act.
“Advocates will also be protected from false criminal cases potentially filed in retaliation, directing police to secure the express approval of a judicial magistrate before taking action against an accused advocate.” – utterly false