Bedlam in courtroom: Police want licences of rowdy lawyers cancelled

SSP says force ‘extremely demoralised’ after policeman was assaulted, warns of impact on court security

ISLAMABAD: As a standoff persists between police and some of Islamabad’s lawyers after the latter had beaten up a police officer and tore his uniform in a district courtroom on Saturday, police on Tuesday sought the suspension of licences and other punitive measures against the group of lawyers involved.

Around a dozen lawyers on Saturday had assaulted ASI Javed Sultan of Margalla police as he testified before a judge. He was beaten up and humiliated inside as well as outside the courtroom of Judicial Magistrate Jawad Hussain Adil.

The lawyers who attacked him were angry because he had impounded an undocumented motorbike of a lawyer a few nights earlier on March 15.

Though the police had booked at least four named and 20 unidentified lawyers for assaulting Sultan, they did not arrest the suspects since the lawyers’ bodies rallied behind the suspected lawyers while some secured pre-arrest bail.

The police on Tuesday wrote a letter to judges of the Islamabad district court, the district and high court bar associations as well as chief justices of the Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court seeking  suo motu intervention and punitive measures including suspending practising licences of the lawyers involved in allegedly assaulting the police officer.

The letter, written by SSP-Operations Sajid Kiani, said that a uniformed police official is a symbol of the state. Kiani added that a police official was humiliated and beaten in public.

Moreover, he said that Saturday’s violent incident had ‘extremely demoralised’ policemen engaged in providing security to the district and superior courts.

The SSP also said that if such incidents were not prevented in the future, it would be difficult for the police to provide security to courts.

“This low level of morale would definitely affect the security of courts for which responsibility would definitely go to this incident and other such incidents [that] happened in past and people responsible for those incidents … In this situation a reasonably good level of security for courts is not possible,” the letter adds.

The letter further said that if the bar associations continue supporting excesses of some of their colleagues, “then expecting the police to work with clear minds for securing courts is something which might not be possible. The bar is expected to understand the consequences of this incident resulting in the weak security of courts.”

The letter also said that when Imdadullah, the lawyer whose motorbike had been confiscated, filed a private complaint against the police official before a civil judge, hearing of the case was fixed hurriedly on March 18 without following procedure listed under Section 202 of CrPC.

The SSP assured that the case registered against the lawyers would be investigated on merit.

There have been several incidents of lawyers beating up police and sometimes even misbehaving with judges at district courts in recent months. In May last year, former Senate chairman Nayyer Hussain Bokhari was booked for assaulting a police official who tried to frisk him at the court’s entrance. Then in October, senior lawyer Muhammad Ilyas Siddiqui swore at Judicial Magistrate Humayun Dilawar in the courtroom after the judge questioned why the lawyer was not wearing proper attire.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2017.