Quetta Carnage: Legal fraternity continues protest

The lawyers and media personnel had gone to the health facility where the body of the BHCBA president was kept

KARACHI: The legal fraternity boycotted on Monday the legal proceedings at the Sindh High Court, the City courts and District Malir courts to protest the targeted killing of the Balochistan High Court Bar Association’s (BHCBA) president and 75 others in Quetta on August 8.  The legal proceedings came to a complete halt as the lawyers did not turn up in the courts to plead their cases and instead remained in the offices of the bar associations. As a result, dozens of cases could not be adjudicated on what was supposed to be the first working day of the week. Meanwhile, the under-trial prisoners were shifted back to the prisons without being produced in the courts. Around 75 people, mostly lawyers and two cameramen of private TV channels, were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up on the gate of the Civil Hospital, Quetta. The lawyers and media personnel had gone to the health facility where the body of the BHCBA president Bilal Anwar Kasi had also been shifted.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2016.