Doctors reject lawyers’ overtures over PIC incident

Refuse bouquets, rally against PIC incident


Photo Agha Mehroz/Jameel Mirza December 15, 2019
Holy Family Hospital staff members protest against the attack on the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. PHOTO: AGHA MEHROZ/EXPRESS

RAWALPINDI: The medical practitioners on Saturday, refusing any chance of compromise with the lawyers, have rejected what they called was the politics of bouquets on the Lahore incident maintaining their demand to run the case against the incident in a military court.

Legal practitioners had sent flowers to doctors on Friday which they refused to accept.

Doctors and paramedics took out a rally from the Holy Family Hospital (HFH) on Saturday to protest against attack of lawyers of Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC).

The participants included Young Doctors Association (YDA) Punjab Chairman Dr Shoaib Tarar, HFH President HFH Dr Shehryar, and Dr Tariq Masood and Dr Haider Akhtar. A delegation of doctors from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) also participated in the protest to express solidarity with the fraternity. The speakers once again demanded to approve the doctors’ security bill at earliest. They said that they would announce their next move if their demands were not accepted.

The officials accused that the attack was the result of the collusion between the government and lawyers and expressed that the chief ministers as with health and law ministers proved to be ineligible and inept.

They contended that even during warfare, the hospitals were not attacked but, they expressed, the so-called protectors of law stormed it.

The speakers said that the lawyer’s fraternity was presenting them bouquets which were not acceptable and demanded to run the case in a military court.   A heavy police force also remained present on the protest site.

Lawyers’ boycott continues

The lawyers boycotted the court proceedings for the third consecutive day on the call of District Bar Association (DBA) Rawalpindi.

The lawyers though marked their presence in the courts but they did not attend any of the hearings. Owing to the boycott, the litigants of thousands of cases had to return hopelessly for another day.

It has been learnt that more than four thousand cases in district sessions, civil, family and magistrate courts have been adjourned during the ongoing strike while due to uncertainty, the hearings of several cases have been delayed until January next year.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2019.

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