Enraged family protests at site of Butt brothers’ bloody end

Relatives demand justice, scare judge and staff at Sessions Court.

LAHORE:

The relatives of two brothers gunned down during a murder trial one week ago were involved in an emotional protest on Saturday outside the courtroom where the killings took place.

Some 30 people including the mother, sister and aunt of Zeeshan Butt and Ali Imran Butt gathered outside the courtroom of Additional District and Sessions Judge Haji Ahmed. Some carried banners, some carried sticks.

They beat the door to the courtroom and chanted slogans condemning the judge and the police and demanding justice. A crowd of some 50 onlookers, including police guards, gathered at the scene, but no one tried to stop them.

Meanwhile inside, the judge and staffers had quickly locked the courtroom door when they had heard the protesters approaching. The staffers said that already traumatised by seeing two men shot in cold blood in the courtroom last week, they and the judge felt very scared. The door to the record keeper’s room was also locked.

The furore at the courtroom continued for over 20 minutes, the protesters beating the locked door and trying to get in.

“I demand justice for my sons,” said Zahida Perveen, mother of the two brothers. In a rage, she condemned the judge and the police and demanded that her sons’ killer be arrested.

The Islampura station house officer and Deputy Superintendent of Police Shoaib Khokhar eventually arrived at the scene and were able to calm the protesters with assurances that the murderer would be arrested soon.

Inside the courtroom, the staffers breathed a sigh of relief when the protest ended, but expressed deep concern about their security. “Anything could happen to us.

Today this mob tried to get us, tomorrow a gunman could walk in and shoot us,” said one staffer, referring to the killing on May 28 when a lone gunman shot and killed the brothers as they stood in the dock as murder accused.

Witnesses said that police guards deployed at the courtrooms in the Sessions Court building had gathered at the scene but done nothing to stop the protest yesterday.

Muhammad Shafique, who is in charge of security at the courts, said that a Constable Samia had tried to stop the protesting women, but she was shoved aside as they entered the Sessions Court. Asked why visitors to the court had been allowed to push away a constable who was stopping them and then proceed inside unhindered, he said the guards were not allowed to leave the gate unattended at any time, “as this might be part of the plan”.

Shafique denied that the protesters could have smuggled wooden sticks onto the premises past the police guards at the entrance, though several witnesses reported seeing some of them carry canes or wooden chair legs and slam them in the courtroom door.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2011.