Police told to remove Lawrence Road barriers

Barricades are not just hurting business at the filling station, but also causing major traffic jams, says petitioner.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court on Wednesday ordered the city police to remove all security barriers erected at the Lawrence Road-Queen Road near the offices of the capital city police officer and an intelligence agency.

The court directed the police to clear the road and open it for public use, observing that closing a thoroughfare was a violation of fundamental rights. Justice Ibadur Rehman Lodhi issued this order while accepting the petition moved by the owner of a petrol station near the offices.

Petitioner Rizwan Ahamd said he had been running the petrol station for 50 years. For the last year, the CCPO and SP Civil Lines had blocked the road every day from 9am to 9pm for traffic heading to China Chowk. The petitioner said that the barricades were not just hurting business at the filling station, but also causing major traffic jams.

The petitioner said the LHC had already issued orders to the police in a number of cases to remove hurdles from thoroughfares, but this had not been done on Lawrence Road.

On Wednesday, Civil Lines SP Abdul Qamar and SP (Legal) Ijaz Gillani appeared before the court and stated that the road had been closed for security reasons because the offices of an intelligence agency were located nearby.

The court rejected this reasoning and said that the police had no legal authority to block a public road.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2012.