Court room turns into battlefiled

2 groups of lawyers beat each other up, throw chairs.

LAHORE:

A court room on Wednesday turned into a battle filed when two groups of lawyers beat each other during the proceedings of a cheque fraud case.

The police arrested six men from the court premises.

The scuffle started between supporters of Advocate Hafeezullah and advocate AM Hamid Sheikh in Additional District and Sessions judge Anjum Raza Syed’s court.

The fight left five lawyers with minor injuries on their faces, arms and hands.

According to a court staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, that some people entered the court room suddenly and started pulling chairs from under lawyers. Then they started throwing the chairs towards the judge as well as AM Hamid Sheikh’s legal team. Sheikh and his team were then beaten up by Hafeezullah’s team, the staffer said. The judge stood up and told the men to stop fighting, said the court official, “but no one listened to him”.

He said Sheikh fainted from the beating.

The judge then directed court staff to call the police. The police arrested six people – identified as Warris Ali, Mujahid Nadeem, Muhammad Nasir, Khalid Javed, Muhammad Raoof and Khalid Mehmood. Their many accomplices, however, were able to escape arrest.

Advocate AM Hamid Sheikh later registered an FIR with the Islampura police station against the six men arrested under Sections 379, 506, 147 and 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Sheikh told The Express Tribune that Hafeezullah had gotten back at him for registering a case against him after a cheque he had issued bounced. “Hafeez had a grudge against me because I found out that he had forged surety bonds while seeking his own bail,” Sheikh said. He said that Hafeezullah’s men had earlier broken two of his son’s fingers.

When contacted, Hafeezullah said that he was being wrongly implicated by Sheikh. “It’s Sheikh who holds a grudge against me and is manipulating the police,” he said. He denied that he had attacked the rival group, adding that Sheikh’s legal team had attacked them and they had acted in self defence.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2012.