Indian lawyer lands in jail after hurling shoe at magistrate

PATNA, India, Aug 13 (AFP) - An Indian lawyer has been jailed for a month for flinging his shoe at a magistrate who ordered him to stop cross-examining a hostile witness, a court official said Wednesaday.

The lawyer, Suresh Prasad, was also fined 1,000 rupees (about 21 dollars) by the court in Patna, capital of India's eastern Bihar state.

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Prasad argued that the magistrate had angered him by calling him a "fool" for cross-examining the witness.

When the magistrate ordered him to stop the cross-examination, he had taken off his shoe and hurled it in anger. The shoe did not strike the magistrate.

Prasad had to argue his own case in court as none of the three counsels he had approached to defend him was willing to handle the case after it received widespread publicity in the local media.

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