Lawyers threaten tit-for-tat approach against police

Say the arrest of their president is completely unacceptable

MULTAN: In an ongoing standoff between the bar and the bench, the enraged representatives of lawyers bodies have threatened to respond tit for tat if police again raid the houses of senior lawyers.



The threat was made unequivocally by District Bar Association Multan President Yousuf Zubair while he was speaking to the enraged lawyer. He was speaking to the lawyers at the district bar before leaving for Lahore to attend All Pakistan Lawyers’ convention, which is going to be held on Saturday (today).

Zubair is leading the delegation of lawyers from the district bar Multan who left for the provincial city on Thursday.  Thousands of lawyers from Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Bahawalpur divisions observed a complete strike and did not perform their duties to express solidarity with the Multan High Court Bar Association.

The lawyers continued their protest against cancellation of licence of Lahore High Court Bar Association Multan Chapter President Sher Zaman Qureshi and issuance of an arrest warrants as no attorney appeared before any court of law.



The members of district and high court bars staged separate demonstrations, shouted slogans against the judiciary and demanded an immediate withdrawal of case against Qureshi. The standoff between the lawyers and the judiciary had begun following an incident on July 24, 2017 when a senior judge Ghulam Qasim Khan at LHC Multan bench asked some lawyers to leave the courtroom. Qureshi was among the lawyers who were asked to leave.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2017.