Daska riots: Govt warned against protecting SHO

LBA says they will lodge FIR against chief minister if SHO is sent abroad.

LAHORE:

Lahore Bar Association (LBA) leaders said on Monday they would file a complaint against the chief minister if the SHO accused of shooting dead two lawyers in Daska on May 25 was sent abroad to avoid prosecution.

The LBA held a session at Aiwan-e-Adl to protest against the killing of Daska Bar Association president Rana Khalid Abbas and Advocate Irfan Chauhan allegedly by Daska City SHO Shehzad Warraich. Two lawyers – Jahanzeb Sahi and Samiullah Malhi – were injured in the shooting.

The LBA leaders also accused some members of the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) of corruption.

“How can the poor get justice when even important people are treated like animals?” former PbBC member Chaudhry Awais said. He said government leaders were behind the killings in Model Town on June 17 last year but a joint investigation team had given it a clean chit.

PbBC media coordinator Sharafat Ali Khan accused the PbBC chief and some other members of “selling the blood” of their colleagues during a recent meeting with the chief minister. He said the PbBC chief should have taken all lawyers into confidence on the matter. Former LBA president Rana Zia Abdur Rehman said the bar would lodge an FIR against the chief minister if the SHO was sent abroad. He accused the government of trying to divide lawyers.

PbBC member Chaudhry Akram said some of the bar members were corrupt. He said they had brought shame to their colleagues. When some of the meeting participants asked Akram to name them, he said it was inappropriate to do so at this point.

LBA senior vice president Jahangir Bhatti said lawyers would not let the government create rifts among their ranks. “We are forming a committee that will update the house every day on the progress in the inquiry into the Daska killings,” he said.

The meeting carried a resolution, moved by Syed Farhan Ali Naqvi, requesting that LBA election candidates be stopped from visiting lawyers at their homes to seek votes.

Meeting

Representatives of the LBA and the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) called on Lahore High Court Chief Justice Manzoor A Malik on Monday and expressed their concerns regarding the Daska shootings. Later, some PbBC members, including chairperson Farah Ijaz Baig, also met the chief justice. Justice Malik assured the delegation that the matter would be resolved in accordance with law.

LHCBA president Pir Masood Chishti said lawyers had deposited Rs600,000 in an account opened for the victims of the Daska incident.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2015.