Daily Times : Lawyers protest colleagues’ beating by sleuths in Rawalpindi

Lawyers protest colleagues’ beating by sleuths in Rawalpindi

* CJP urged to take suo motu notice of incident

Staff Report | August 12, 2007

RAWALPINDI: Lawyers of the Rawalpindi District Bar Association (RDBA) on Saturday boycotted courts to protest thrashing of their two colleagues by sleuths of intelligence agencies on Friday night.

They said the intelligence agencies did that to avenge the beating of Advocate Naeem Bokhari by enraged lawyers at the district courts on Thursday.

In the RDBA general body meeting on Saturday, the lawyers said advocates GM Shah and Raheel Akhtar were picked up on Friday night by the agencies personnel and held separately for eight hours at unknown places. They were released on Saturday morning by the agencies personnel after taking their signatures and thumb impressions on blank papers, the lawyers said.

The lawyers condemned the government tactics of harassment and victimisation and demanded that Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry take suo motu notice of this incident and provide them security. They demanded that army return to barracks and concentrate on their professional matters.

Ikram Chaudhry, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) former vice-president, said the lawyers’ struggle was for the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution and the government could not hijack it through intimidation.

Asmatullah Khan, the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) Rawalpindi Bench president, said that all the lawyers were fighting a fascist regime.

Sajid Ejaz Bhatti said President Pervez Musharraf’s advisors were scared of the lawyers’ movement and wanted to weaken it.

Ibadur Rehman Lodhi, a senior lawyer, said the Supreme Court now had to reciprocate the lawyers’ struggle. He said the SC chief justice should issue orders that lawyers could not be arrested without orders of a high court chief justice.

Later, the lawyers held a protest rally at Kutchery Chowk and chanted slogans of “Go Musharraf Go” and “We do not accept the rule of terror”.

The lawyers said the RDBA had banned entry to the bar of Rai Nawaz Kharal, Malik Abdul Qayyum, Wasi Zafar, Wasim Sajjad, Naeem Bokhari, Sharifuddin Pirzada, Ahmed Raza Kasuri, Ibrahim Satti, Raja Basharat, Qazi Muhammad Ameen, Khalid Ranjha, Chaudhry Naseer and some other lawyers who had opposed the movement for reinstatement of CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

GM Shah, a lawyer, told Daily Times that he was with his relatives at Chothar Syedan, near Rawat, when a man called him that he wanted to meet him to discuss two cases. “I told him to meet me at a hotel in Sihala, but the caller insisted that he is waiting for him at Mughal Chowk,” Shah said.

Shah said upon his arrival at the chowk, two motorcyclists stopped his car and asked him that they wanted to discuss the case at his (Shah) house. As they reached near the house, a man in a white corolla intercepted them and introduced himself as ASP Raza, he said. “Raza searched our car and then asked us to go with him to a police station,” he said, adding that on the way to the police station, he was blindfolded and handcuffed.

“They (attackers) took me to an unknown place and beat me up for about an hour. Then they gave me a white paper to sign on,” Shah said.

He quoted the attackers telling him, “Oh, it were you who arranged the hunger strike camp for the CJP’s restoration.”