Legal affairs: Punjab Police seeks approval to hire three lawyers

‘Officers have lost faith in advocate general’s office’.

LAHORE:

The inspector general has asked the chief minister to allow the Punjab Police to hire three lawyers for high-profile cases, as officers have lost faith in the advocate general’s office, The Express Tribune has learnt.

IG Habibur Rehman has sent a summary to the Home Department to this effect and asked the secretary to forward the request to the chief minister for the allocation of funds.

The IG said in the summary that the link between the AG’s office and the police should be abolished and they should be free to hire lawyers to represent the department in all cases in the superior courts.

The IG said that they required specialist and seasoned lawyers to handle police cases. He said that lawyers from the AG’s office were not doing their job to the satisfaction of police high-ups and the morale of the force was suffering as a result. Police officers had little confidence in the AG’s office and so they sometimes didn’t brief the counsel at length.

The IG announced that private lawyers would be hired to represent police at a police darbar at Layyah last Tuesday. In that speech, he also urged the courts not to belittle and embarrass officers who appeared before them.

“The police have faced huge criticism recently in high profile cases in which the lawyers from the AG’s office have done a poor job representing police officers,” said a senior police official on the condition of anonymity.

According to Article 8 of the Police Order 2002, a Legal Affairs Division in the Police Department headed by a deputy inspector general gives legal opinions to high-ups. The AG’s office is meant to represent all departments in the courts.

Ahsanullah Bajwa, the head of the legal branch in the Punjab Police, said that Police Department was facing several criminal cases. “Hiring veteran lawyers will help the police better plead their cases in superior courts,” Bajwa said.

Advocate General Ashter Ausaf Ali said he was not aware of any summary moved by the police, but that no department could hire private counsel without the AG’s consent. He said that the office was staffed with good lawyers quite capable of taking on complex cases. “The AG’s office has been revamped and we have the best minds and specialists to pursue cases in superior courts,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2012.