SAVEENA BEDI SACHAR SHE LOVES A TOUGH FIGHT SHE IS A BORN WINNER

It seems like I have one of my own stories connected or associated with the people I meet.I met a young, petite and shy woman who came to my place where I sit and write over cups of tea in the place which is called ‘Multea'. She was accompanied by my dear friend Shaamla, who is a filmmaker waiting for her chance to shine and bring the shine into the lives of all those who will see her films soon. The little woman was very shy and withdrawn and I don't know how she gradually opened up and talked about herself, which I later realised was not even one-tenth of the titan she was. She was a lawyer who had and is still fighting out some of the most dicey and tricky cases in every kind of court, from the magistrates' courts all over the country, the High Courts and the Supreme Court, especially cases about intellectual property, which included the many cases of the film industry in which she is a recognised specialist now.....

Saveena Bedi Sachar

She struck some kind of a chord with me when she told her friend, Shaamla about the striking resemblance between me and her father. My father, reminded me of the time when I was crazy about being a lawyer. My obsessions to be a lawyer began when I accompanied my friend, Sanjeeva Shetty whose father, Manjunath Shetty had a canteen in the compound of dilapidated house in which the two courts, the 10th court and the 22nd court were housed and the first thing that struck me as a boy of sixteen, just out of school was how the temples of justice could be so dirty, so dark and so deary.I next saw the conditions of the many lawyers who at first sight looked as if they were a bunch of some out of this world crows who were not in the best of health, their black coats were tattered and their entire personalities made them look as if they had just walked out of their beds somewhere in some slums and rushed to the only courts they could think they could practice in. I sat in both these courts during my entire vacations which I could afford to because I could walk down and my tea and lunch were assured by my friend, Sanjeeva Shetty.I soon came to know more and more about these lawyers and even the magistrates. I was shocked when I was told that the magistrates were paid a monthly salary of two thousand rupees while lawyers like Mr Vasantrao Patil and Mr Arvind Patanker made more than ten thousand rupees a day (this was way back in the late sixties) and I wondered how a man who was only earning two thousand rupees could not be carried away or be bribed by the lawyers who made five times more than what he was paid. My interest however continued and I visited every magistrate's court in places like Bandra, Kurla, Mazagaon, Dadar and finally the Esplanade Court which was also known as Qilla Court for reasons I never knew then and I don't know now. I was close to taking a decision against being a lawyer when I was a witness to one of the most horrifying scenes in the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court which was a part of the Esplanade Court.A lawyer called Mr Mishra whose coat was stained and torn in different parts stood up to raise an adjournment motion for a client he had not even seen and before he could proceed in his bad English, Mr Vakil stopped him and almost screamed saying, “Mr... Whatever your name is, please dress and then address" . That one line of Mr Vakil made headlines in the tabloids the next afternoon and it stayed in my mind and still stays.I however continued with my obsession till I reached the Sessions Court where the very sensational Daruwala case in which a young and educated man called Daruwala was charged with the mad and absolutely cruel act of murdering four elderly Parsi people from one family. I was carried away by the lawyer provided to him by the government, Mr P.R Vakil and Daruwala decided to fight his own case without taking the help of Mr Vakil.I buncked all my lectures for my second year of M.A in English Literature from the Bombay University, only to attend the Sessions Court from ten thirty in the morning till the court was adjourned for the day and I together with the veteran actor Murad (who was seen in some of the most memorable films like “Mughal-E-Azam" and the father of actor Raza Murad) reached the court before anyone else could and we were there till the Sessions Judge, Justice C.T Dighe declared Daruwala guilty of a cruel and heinous murder and sentenced him to death. It was the first time I heard that icy statement declaring the death sentence on a man. What however surprised me more was how Justice Dighe who had just passed one of the most deadly sentence could walk across the Cross Maiden with such a cool demeanour on his face and with just one shot policeman as his security guard. However, the back of my obsession was broken into a hundred parts when I saw two young lawyers outside the Andheri Court talking about how much money they had found that day. The first started counting notes of ten and five and stopped counting when he had finished with ninety-five rupees and the other had stopped when he reached sixty-five rupees and couldn't count any more, because there was nothing more to count. I used to carry a diary with some of my writing paper folded like this way the lawyers did when they stood in court.I reached the gate of the courts and tore both my diary and those pages into several pieces and vowed never to even try and be a lawyer. But, people in my village were sure that I would become a lawyer. In fact, Birbal, the barber of my village who we used to be scared of because of the way he hurt us with his instruments and razors which had gone rusty added to my punishment everytime he asked me, “Baba, ab vakil banne mein kitna time lagega?"I didn't have any answer that would make him happy, but he asked me the same question every month which was a must haircut according to my mother's orders. Unfortunately, I couldn't fulfill the ambition of Birbal and my mother died soon after and I was forced to live the life of a vagabond who parents asked their sons to keep away from as I was a Naxalite and a Communist with a beard and long hair and a khadi  kurta with a bag slung around my shoulders and old and borrowed chappals and above all a young man who had fought with the local priest and had stopped going to church......

Saveena Bedi Sachar

Sorry, that was quite a long flashback and I hope the gracious lady, Saveena Bedi Sachar will forgive me, I couldn't help it when I knew I had met a lawyer who I had no intentions of meeting at least in this life and I have and I will never believe in another life. But, what did I know that I would come across a woman like Saveena who was so very different from the image I had about lawyers. I in those few minutes saw in her a lawyer who could also be very human, very loving and caring. She was the shy woman next door as long as she was sitting with me, but it was only when I reached home and did some homework about her that I realised that she was a very different women free the one I met when I learnt about all her amazing achievements.

Believe me, when I realised what and who she was, I remembered the pure gold revolver President Najibullah of Afghanistan had gifted Amitabh Bachchan with during the shooting of “Khuda Gava". The gold-plated revolver was encased in a pouch made of the skin of a new born goat...

Behind the soft and shy Saveena Sachar is a true titan as will be seen from the list of all that she has done in her young and absolutely admirable life.... Saveena is a BA, LLB having specialized in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from the prestigious World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Switzerland and is one of the youngest co-authors of a Book on Intellectual Property Rights, published by Butterworths, U.K.

Having worked for several years, being part of and heading the legal function in leading Indian and Multinational companies viz. Walt Disney, UTV, Indiagames, Star TV, INX Media (9X, 9XM and NewsX), Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) and Music Broadcast Private Limited (Radio City 91.1FM ), Adv. Saveena Bedi Sachar established her own law firm ‘Lawhive Associates’ in June 2012

Saveena Bedi Sachar

Lawhive Associates has its principal offices in Mumbai and associate offices in Pune, Delhi and Hyderabad and is engaged in primarily providing diverse legal services related to Media and Entertainment laws,  Intellectual Property rights including registration of all types of trademarks, copyrights, patents, etc., Hospitality, Advertising, Telecom, Insurance, Health Care industry, Real Estate and Infrastructure, Family laws and several other Civil and Criminal laws.

Advocate Saveena Bedi Sachar also has a successful litigation practice and has handled high-stake litigations within India before the Supreme Court of India, High Courts across India and several other Courts, Forums, Tribunals including the Competition Commission of India, Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and several other Civil and Criminal Courts. She has also handled several International arbitrations and litigations in several countries across the globe including USA and Germany and has very recently won an award for one of the leading Indian media houses under the JAM’s rules in New York.

She was born and brought up in Pune in a joint family of 10 members. She got married in Mumbai.She has an extremely supportive family in terms of parents and inlaws. Has a 5 1/2 year daughter around which her entire life resolves and sometimes feels guilty as she does not have enough time to watch her ‘Princess' grow up minute by minute because of her professional commitments. In fact the guilt begins from the fact that she was appearing in the Bombay High Court even a day before she was admitted for her baby’s delivery and got back to work a day after the delivery but the thought of giving due importance to each professional commitment that she takes on for her clients keeps her on her toes on a daily basis.

She has had the good fortune to interact professionally with stalwarts of the industry such as Dev Anand, Dharmendra, Simi Garewal, Asit Modi, Jaaved Jafferi, Dilip Joshi, R.D. Telang, Shaamla Puneet, Umesh Shukla and several others, all of them big names, but she has never shirked her responsibility of being of use to lesser human beings who are in need of her support which she is always too willing to give, a fact that many in the industry know about and many others would have known if she had gone around blowing her own trumpet, which she knows she will never be able to do.

She provides her expertise to leading television shows including the longest running show ‘‘Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah’' and has had her name included in the credits of several films including “102 Not Out" starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor and several other films....

And after she has finished all her hectic work and has almost reached a stage of fatigue, she makes it a point to spend some of the most glorious and loving moments with her 5 1/2 year old ‘Princess' which takes away all the fatigue and negative forces in her day to start fresh again to fight another round of battles in courts and even other places on high-and win. That's what born winners are all about.

I will never forget the evening of August 29 at ‘Multea' where I met a woman who saved me from coming to certain conclusions about women after spending a lifetime with them and having experiences more bad than good....

Thank-you, Shaamlaji for introducing Saveena to me. She has saved women from my growing wratch and made me adjourn my final decision about women.

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