Lawyer beats up client in dispute over ‘bribe money’

Man thrashed by 20 lawyers at Sessions Court, booked for impersonation.

LAHORE:

A lawyer and some 20 of his colleagues thrashed a client at the Sessions Court on Monday, allegedly because the client demanded that the lawyer return the money he had given to him to bribe a judge.

Mian Muhammad Aslam told The Express Tribune that Advocate Mian Shehbaz and his colleagues had beaten him up because he had demanded his Rs500,000 back. He said that Shehbaz had promised to get a cheque fraud case against him dismissed. He said he was to be tried for fraud on a Rs4 million cheque by Justice Mazhar Iqbal Sindhu of the Lahore High Court. “Shehbaz did not keep his promise so I demanded my money back,” said Aslam.

The lawyers involved in the incident claimed to have found fake visiting cards on Aslam that stated him to be an additional district and sessions judge (ADSJ) and a member of the Punjab Bar Council. They said they beat him up as he was impersonating a lawyer. Aslam said that he had been framed and the lawyers had printed the fake cards themselves. He said that he had no reason to pretend to be a lawyer.

Aslam and Shehbaz clashed ahead of the former’s pre-arrest bail hearing before ADSJ Arif Hameed Shaikh after Aslam demanded the Rs500,000 back. Eyewitnesses said that the two were involved in a heated exchange that degenerated into a physical fight. Some 20 other lawyers also got involved and they thrashed Aslam in the halls and then in the bar room. He was later handed over to Islampura police, who registered a case against him.

Aslam said that Shehbaz had implicated him in a fake case of impersonating a lawyer because he did not want to return the Rs500,000. Friends of his later said that he would move court against Shehbaz.

Shehbaz said that Aslam was a liar and a criminal named in 36 cases registered at police stations in Lahore. He denied taking Rs500,000 from Aslam or printing the visiting cards.

Advocate Muhammad Tariq, whose complaint formed the basis of the FIR registered at Islampura police station, said he had seen Aslam handing out his visiting cards at the District Courts, so he was puzzled to see him at the Sessions Court not dressed as a lawyer. He said he approached and asked him if he was a lawyer and Aslam ran away. He and other lawyers caught and searched him and found the fake visiting cards, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2011.