Sessions court security: Lawyers say extra police not enough

Ten policemen deployed with judges trying murder cases.


Express June 01, 2011

LAHORE:


Ten police officials were deployed with ten additional district and sessions judges (ADSJs) who are trying murder cases at the Sessions Courts on Tuesday, but lawyers said that this was not enough to cover the gaping security holes exposed by the shooting of two brothers accused of murder in a courtroom last Saturday.


Police guards were deployed at the courts of ADSJs Rao Abdul Jabbar, Sana Khan Attique, Sardar Tahir Sabar, Ameer Muhammad Khan, Saeedullah Mughal and others.

But the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) boycotted the courts on Tuesday and vowed to continue until the extra security measures it says the chief minister promised them are put in place.

LBA president Shehzad Hassan Sheikh said that at a meeting on Monday, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had agreed to the bar’s demands that the boundary wall at the courts be raised, that the Baba Ground be opened for parking, that a post of the Quick Response Force be set up at the courts, and that Elite Force personnel be deployed with judges trying murder cases.

“We will not appear before the courts until the promises made by the chief minister are met,” Sheikh said. He added that the killing of the two brothers had spread fear among lawyers, court staffers, judges and litigants.

Meanwhile, litigants who had come to attend hearings at the courts on Tuesday were disappointed by the lawyers’ boycott.

Hameeda Bibi, 56, came from Shahdara to attend her daughter’s divorce hearing at a family court, but the hearing was rescheduled. “A boycott is not the right way to get proper security,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1st, 2011.

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