PESHAWAR: Like other parts of the country, the legal fraternity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also boycotted the court proceedings and staged rallies and demonstrations to protest the Punjab ‘police brutality’.
Declaring a black day, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council on the call of Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) had issued a strike call for all courts, including the high courts and subordinate judiciary in the province on Thursday.
Litigants, who had come from far and wide of the province faced great hardships when their counsels did not appear in the courts to plead their cases.The strike call has been issued to show solidarity with the legal fraternity after what they called disturbing events of Punjab police brutality against lawyers, who were peacefully protesting the “unlawful divisions” of the civil courts in Lahore.
To condemn the illegal and unlawful acts by the Punjab police, lawyers across the province staged a complete strike and abstained from appearing in courts to demonstrate solidarity with the advocates of the Lahore Bar Association. They also held protest meetings, marches, and rallies in their respective bar rooms to express their dissent on this matter.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Vice-Chairman Sadiq Khan and chairman of the executive committee Syed Taimur Ali Shah said the lawyers were protesting peacefully and that was every citizen’s legal and constitutional right.They demanded the federal and Punjab governments to take action against the police involved in the torture of lawyers in Lahore.