By By Our Correspondent
A GROUP of lawyers of the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) once again on Wednesday manhandled a private television news reporter and its cameraman in the premises of district and sessions court for no obvious reason.
It is pertinent to mention here that it was the fourth incident of manhandling of journalists by lawyers after the restoration of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chauhdry.
On Wednesday, the reporter of a private TV channel, Muhammad Ashfaq, along with cameraman Irfan, went to district and sessions court for news coverage where Rana Shakeel advocate along with his three unidentified accomplices attacked him, saying that the media persons’ entry to the sessions court was banned.
The lawyers beat up the TV channel team and snatched their camera and mobile phones. The lawyers locked them in a room besides the new canteen in the court building. Later, LBA Secretary Ahmed Yar Chawali arrived and freed the detainees from the lawyers.
In July, the first manhandling case took place at a sessions court where some 20 lawyers of the LBA attacked the crew of a private TV channel, severely injuring the cameraman, for airing the footage of the lawyers’ torture of a policeman on the previous day.
The Punjab Bar Council had suspended licenses of four lawyers, Saeed Anwar, Rana Sajjad, Rana Asif and Malik Haneef Awan, involved in the incident but within next five days when a case was being heard by the high court against these lawyers the PBC restored all the suspended licenses.
In another incident, a group of lawyers manhandled a Geo TV cameraman on the Lahore High Court premises.
When contacted, LBA Rana President Zia Abdur Rehman showed reluctance to comment on the incident and instead guided the scribe to LBA Secretary Ahmed Yar Chawali who said the LBA was totally helpless under these circumstances and there was not anything that the lawyer body could do to resolve the problem.
When a similar incident happened in the past, journalists launched a protest rally from the Punjab Union of Journalists office to Aiwan-e-Adl at which the LBA officials apologised and ensured that such an incident would not be allowed to happen in future. However, when the LBA secretary was reminded of that assurance, he said that LBA could not control the whole lawyers’ community and such violent activities did not represent the LBA and disconnected the call.