FAZAL SHER

ISLAMABAD: Lawyers on Saturday staged a protest demonstration against demolition of their chambers at the district courts, arrest of their colleagues, and threatened that if their arrested fellows were not released within 48 hours their protests will spread across the country.

A number of lawyers of various bar associations gathered at the district courts, Sector F-8 and then marched towards D-Chowk to demonstrate against demolition of their chambers, arrest of lawyers following staging protest at the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the same matter.

They demanded release of their arrested colleagues within 48 hours, quash the cases registered against the lawyers, and reconstruction of the chambers demolished by the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

They also demanded of the government to construct a separate judicial complex for lawyers.

Raids against those lawyers who were nominated in the FIR should be stopped, they further said.

The protesting lawyers chanted slogans in favour of their demands.

Heavy contingent of police was deployed on the occasion to avert any toward incident.

Haseeb Chaudhry, Islamabad High Court Bar Association, said chief justice of the Supreme Court take cognizance of the matter and fulfill their demands on an immediate basis otherwise we well start staging countrywide protest.

He said this is our judiciary but also pay attention to our demands and issues.

If our demands were not fulfilled within three days, our movement will take a new dimension.

We will not back down until the chambers demolished during the operation were rebuilt, the FIRs were not quashed, and today’s rally was just a trailer, he said.

He said that if our demands were not fulfilled within two days we will comeback.

Vice chairman Islamabad Bar Council Zulfiqar Ali, Chairman executive committee Adil Aziz Qazi, and members of the bar counsel spoke on the occasion.

Two different FIRs had been registered against lawyers after they ransacked the chamber of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) Chief Justice, Athar Minallah, and chanted slogans against him on February 8th in protest against demolition of their chambers at the district courts.