R. Shunmugasundaram takes charge as Advocate General of Tamil Nadu

Senior counsel R. Shunmugasundaram took charge as the Advocate General of Tamil Nadu on Sunday. A Government Order issued on Saturday stated that the Governor had accepted the government’s proposal to appoint him as the new Advocate General for the State.

He is expected to represent the State Government before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy on Monday during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition, taken up by the court suo motu, to monitor the measures being taken by the government to fight the second wave of COVID-19.

Mr. Shunmugasundaram has an experience of 44 years in the Bar and has been a designated senior counsel for the last 20 years. He is also a former Member of Parliament who represented the State in the Rajya Sabha from 2002 to 2008 and had been the State Public Prosecutor from 1996 to 2001.

After completing his law degree and enrolling with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in 1977, he had joined the office of famous criminal lawyer N. Natarajan and gained experience under him till 1980. Thereafter, he got appointed as an Additional Public Prosecutor in 1989 and conducted prosecutions on behalf of the State, Central Bureau of Investigation and the Railways at the Madras High Court.

In 1992, he studied the developments in criminal law in Britain and attend court works at the Old Bailey Central London Criminal Courts, Croydon Crown Court and Royal Courts of Justice, London. He also gained work experience at the Crown Prosecution Department at Manchester, studied the investigation procedures adopted over there and observed the working system of legal aid and probation procedures in Great Britain.

He was appointed as a counsel for the State of Tamil Nadu before Justice M.C. Jain Commission of Inquiry instituted to probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The Madras High Court too had appointed him as an amicus curiae in the London hotel case, against former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, considering the public importance and sensitive nature of the case.

Then, he had pursued the Letters Rogatory issued by a special court in Chennai and worked with the Serious Fraud Office in London and the Attorney General’s Criminal Division at Canberra, Australia for collecting evidence from UK, Malaysia and Australia. During his tenure as a MP, he was part of the Indian delegation to the United Nations and participated in its 59th General Assembly in October 2004.