Suo motu proceedings: Judges, lawyers reject police claim of solving killing cases

SHC CJ tells IG to brief bar leaders regularly on the progress of cas.

KARACHI: Representatives of the bar and some members of the bench have rejected the claim made by top police officials that investigations into lawyers’ killing cases have been successful.

This was the assessment made at a meeting on Thursday that was presided over by the chief justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Musheer Alam, as part of suo motu action taken on the killings of three lawyers in city on Wednesday.

The CJ had summoned Sindh IG along with other officials and leaders of lawyers’ organisations.

The participants of the meeting, held in the CJ’s chambers, refused to buy the explanations made by the Sindh police chief and his team and reminded them that the cases they claim to have solved were of personal enmities. “It was not a success as claimed by the police as none of the accused involved in target killing of the lawyers were arrested,” Khalid Mumtaz, the honorary secretary of the Karachi Bar Association, told IGP Mushtaq Shah.

“Lawyers are above sectarian, linguistic or political divides. There is no sectarian motive in the killings of lawyers and if there is one, the law enforcement agencies are bound to detect and expose it before the people,” the KBA team told a stunned police chief, adding, “Your intelligence network is faulty even though you have more resources.”

While most of participants of the meeting, including the Registrar of the high court, remained tight-lipped about Thursday’s proceedings, Khalid Mumtaz quoted CJ Musheer Alam to have shared the same view and directed the police authorities to share information with the bar associations.

IG Mushtaq Shah and his other officers maintained, however, that sharing any of the information at this stage would prejudice the investigations and may obstruct the arrests. The representatives of the bar associations drew the attention of the police to rising street crime, mobile phone snatchings, particularly in the area around the city courts complex as well as the recent cases of robbers barging into lawyers’ offices.

The chief justice is reported to have asked the police to hold a weekly meeting with the KBA and inform them about the progress. The KBA nominated its secretary as a focal person.

Besides Justice Musheer Alam, Thursday’s meeting was attended by Justice Maqbool Baqar, Justice Faisal Arab and Justice Sajjad Ali. IGP Mushtaq Shah and his team of DIGs and Sindh Prosecutor General Shahadat Awan also attended.

Karachi violence

The Sindh High Court admitted on Thursday an application seeking to re-open two petitions on target killings and ‘no-go areas’ in Karachi.

Justice Maqbool Baqar and Justice Nisar M Shaikh fixed the application for a hearing on January 30. The two petitions were earlier disposed of after the Sindh Additional Advocate General told the court that the issues had already been decided by the Supreme Court in its suo-motu proceedings on Karachi’s law and order situation.

The petitioner then moved a contempt of court application before the apex court which on January 24 returned it, asking him to approach the chief justice of the Sindh High Court, who is also heading a committee to review the implementation of the SC’s orders.

The petitioner said that during the last four months of 2011 (September to December), 420 persons had been targeted.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2012.