Advocate Acharya Shyamji Upadhyay.
– Photo : Amar Ujala
Expansion
Advocate Acharya Shyamji Upadhyay has been practicing law in Sanskrit for 45 years. Even his Vakalatnama, affidavit and application are all in Sanskrit. He fought his first case in 1978 and since then he has been arguing in the same language.
He says that the judges also praised him and never asked him to change the language. He has been awarded the Sanskrit Mitra Award by the Government of India for promoting the Sanskrit language.
Advocate Shyamji Upadhyay tells that when he was about 10 years old, he had come to the court with his father for some work. He was a Sanskrit scholar.
In the court, he told a friend that nobody works in Sanskrit language here, it is a matter of trouble. Then I decided that now I will acquire knowledge of Sanskrit and will practice law in this language. He claims that he is the only lawyer in the country who is fighting cases in Sanskrit language.
Since 1978, he has fought thousands of cases, including murder, robbery and rape, and has won all of them. It is said that in the beginning, the situation was such that when he started presenting his case before the judge, he would get surprised.
He used to communicate with them in Sanskrit language, he has also simplified this language. He said that many times when the judges wanted to understand something and they did not have a translator, he himself translated it into Hindi and explained it to them.