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Friday March 29, 2024

Case file with lawyer irritates client

LONDON: An aggrieved and heartbroken Scottish Pakistani family has accused former Lahore Bar Council President Shafqat Mahmood Chohan of effectively denying them access to justice by refusing to hand over the murder case file of their beloved family member.Glaswegian Pakistani businessman Muhammad Hanif was murdered by his own relatives in

By Murtaza Ali Shah
October 07, 2015
LONDON: An aggrieved and heartbroken Scottish Pakistani family has accused former Lahore Bar Council President Shafqat Mahmood Chohan of effectively denying them access to justice by refusing to hand over the murder case file of their beloved family member.
Glaswegian Pakistani businessman Muhammad Hanif was murdered by his own relatives in Faisalabad on 20th February 2012. Shafqat Chohan’s legal team was originally retained to take the case to the Court of Appeal but the family alleges that Chohan took their money and then ignored all their communications and they ended up having to beg him to lodge their appeal in time. Since then the family has repeatedly attempted to obtain their case file from the former Bar Council President so that they may instruct a different lawyer. Chohan made several promises to return the file but each time he refused to return the papers.
The family was then forced to contact Punjab government’s Commission for Overseas Pakistanis and ask them to intervene on their behalf. Afzaal Bhatti, appointed by Shahbaz Sharif to head the commission, confirmed to The News that his office has done everything they could to get file from the SMC Law Associates but that Chohan’s office has repeatedly lied to them: firstly saying that the file cannot be given to them without the family’s permission; and then stating flatly that they never had the file in the first place. Meanwhile Chohan told the family on four occasions that he would give the file to their representatives and each time that person, including one with a severe heart condition, was made to wait several hours before being turned away.
A spokesman of the victim’s family said: “We are exasperated at the professional negligence of Chohan’s office. We have been trying to get our file for over three months now. This delay is heartbreaking for us as it feels as though we are forced to fight people at every stage. In fact, even before the appeal was filed, I received a call from a random man in the UK saying that Chohan said I should pay the remaining balance into his UK bank account. I refused to do so because Chohan had not done any work. I was angry and upset that my personal details were passed to a stranger without my permission but I was helpless as we had already paid Chohan to file the appeal.”
The family confirmed that they hand delivered the files to Chohan and had at least one meeting where Chohan quoted large parts of the file over the telephone. “We can’t believe Chohan claims he never had our files. It is impossible to draft an appeal without the case file. In the UK he would be struck off for such negligence. If he has simply lost the files and is lying about never having them, it is just as negligent. It is incredible that we can’t even trust the ex-president of the Lahore Bar.”
When contacted Shafqat Chohan accepted that his office had not given file to the family or their representatives but said that they should make an appointment first. When told that the family claims to have made appointment on several occasions, he said that his office has been very busy dealing with important cases.
The victims and the Commission for Overseas Pakistanis are appealing to the Lahore Bar Council to intervene on their behalf. The family intends to take up the matters at the highest level with the government of Pakistan as well as the UK government to retrieve their file from their former lawyer.