Haryana drops Vikas Barala from law officers list amid outrage

Amid mounting public outrage over Vikas Barala's involvement in a stalking in 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Haryana has decided to drop his name from the list of newly appointed law officers in the office of the Haryana Advocate General (AG).

According to a report by The Tribune, the Haryana government has informed Barala that he will not be joining as a law officer, with the Home Department conveying the decision to drop his name from the official list.

The report further suggested that Vikas’s father, Rajya Sabha MP Subhash Barala, is believed to have advised the government to remove his son’s name from consideration.

Barala had hit headlines in 2017 as a law student when he and one Ashish Kumar were accused of pursuing the vehicle of the daughter of an IAS officer. The car chase happened in Chandigarh during the intervening night of August 4 and 5, when the woman was returning to her home in Panchkula. 

Barala was arrested and remained in prison between August 2017 and January 2018, when he was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The case is currently pending before a magistrate and is fixed for defence evidence on August 2. The statements of accused persons were recorded in May this year. Prior to that, the prosecution evidence was closed on April 9.

Barala, who completed his law during the pendency of the case, enrolled as an advocate in 2019 and was included by the State government in a panel of lawyers to conduct cases on behalf of boards and corporations. 

He was appointed as an Assistant Advocate General (AAG) in a list of 97 law officers approved by then-Governor Bandaru Dattatreya on July 18. The appointments followed an advertisement issued earlier this year by the AG for 100 law officer posts. A five-member committee chaired by the AG later finalised the selections.

The complainant in the 2017 stalking and attempted abduction case against Barala criticised his appointment in a strongly-worded Instagram post, questioning the government’s decision to include him in the list and highlighting the negative message it conveyed.