I like your well-written response which concisely explains why OP was charged that amount.
>I remember in my early days of practice, my senior took me along to take a verbal opinion from a former Chief Justice of India who spoke to us for 10 mins and handed us a bill of INR 15 lakhs
Interesting! Upon receiving the bill, were you just as flabbergasted as OP seems to be, or did you expect such a number?