SSP transferred after lawyer's protest

HYDERABAD:

The legal fraternity of Hyderabad laid siege to the SSP Hyderabad's office in protest on Tuesday in reaction to registration of an FIR on a lawyer's private vehicle charged with using a police router, fancy number plates and black tinted glasses.

DIG Hyderabad Tariq Razzak Dharejo visited the SSP office past midnight in the early hours of Wednesday and held negotiations with lawyers. He accepted their demand for the transfer of SSP SSP Farrukh Ali Lanjar. The protest ended after 2am.

The Hyderabad District Bar Association (HDBA) earlier on Monday issued a statement of condemnation, contending that advocate Ali Raza Bozdar's car, Suzuki Mehran bearing registration number BQC-508, has been wrongly named in the FIR.

The bar called for appointing an office of a rank not below DSP to conduct an impartial probe.

The FIR, registered on complaint of ASI Maqsoo Ali Sehto at Bhitai Nagar police station on Monday, alleged that Bozdar's car was signaled to stop on Jamshoro Road but its driver sped away.

After a brief police chase the driver abandoned the car near Rajputana Hospital and escaped.

Dozens of lawyers reached the office of SSP Farrukh Ali Lanjar on Tuesday afternoon, seeking a meeting with him to persuade him to direct his subordinate cops to back-off from the case. However, Lanjar reportedly evaded a meeting with the lawyers. Consequently, the protest continued till the filing of this report on Tuesday night with the lawyers resorting to the demand of his immediate removal from Hyderabad.

In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, the Hyderabad police claimed that they have registered about 50 FIRs on the vehicles and their owners using police lights and sirens, black windows and fancy number plates. The SSP was quoted in the statement saying that the crackdown has been launched on the directives of IGP Ghulam Nabi Memon. The statement claimed that an indiscriminate action is being taken against private citizens, government servants and even families of cops which are violating the rules and regulations.

The bar's lawyers including advocates K B Lutf Laghari, Raja Jahanzeb, Faisal Mughal and others accused Hyderabad police for having recently started to target lawyers in the city by implicating them in different cases. They blamed the police for patronizing elements selling narcotics, saying that every SSP brought platoons of SHOs with him but the law and order situation remained bad with motorbikes currently being snatched from every other street.

They named several lawyers who were recently implicated in one or other case by the Hyderabad police to assert that the police have been dealing with the lawyers with perceptible discrimination.