Compensation squabble: Stop playing politics over dead lawyers, says PbBC

Govt assures Rs10m compensation each for families of deceased lawyers.

LAHORE: Daska Bar Association general secretary Awais Sindhu said he was disappointed that members of other bars had accused the Daska Bar Association of “selling the blood” of lawyers who were killed by the police in Daska. He was speaking at a press conference at the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) office on Friday.

Sindhu said Rana Khalid Abass, the Daska Bar Association president who was killed, had five children. “We wanted compensation and guarantee of a safe future for them.” Sindhu demanded that other bars stop criticising the Punjab Bar Council for approaching the chief minister and getting their demands fulfilled.

PbBC vice chairperson Faraj Ejaz Baig said if members of other bars thought that they had done something illegal by asking the chief minister to fulfil the Daska Bar Association’s demands, “we would do it again”.  She said if the government balked at fulfilling its promise they would launch a country-wide protest.

Later talking to The Express Tribune Baig said some officials of the Pakistan Bar Council, the Supreme Court Bar Association, the Lahore High Court Bar Association and the Lahore Bar Association preferred to play politics over the dead rather than doing something for the deceased lawyers’ families.

She said these lawyers couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the PbBC had managed to secure Rs10 million compensation each for the families of the deceased lawyers, a plot of land and job opportunities for members of their families. She said the government had also promised Rs2.5 million to the lawyers injured in the incident.

Baig said representatives of other bars had urged young lawyers to stage sit-ins and wreak havoc on roads for their own vested interests.

She said Lahore Bar Association senior vice president Muhammad Jahangir Bhatti did not have the authority to revoke the membership of lawyers. She said the LBA president was currently abroad to perform Umrah.

“The demands had been put forward by the Daska Bar Association, not us,” she said. “None of the lawyers slinging mud at us visited Daska after the incident…why do they have a problem after we managed to secure compensation for the families of the deceased lawyers?”

She said it was easy to make inflammatory speeches on television and incite people against some group, but hard to take the families of the deceased lawyers under their wing.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2015.