Violence in our courtrooms, particularly by lawyers appearing before the subordinate judiciary, has become commonplace in the Punjab. Lawyers are on record having misbehaved with the chief justice of the Lahore High Court. They are known to have gone on rampage on the premises of the superior courts. In the last week of April, an activist in a black jacket struck a judge in Jaranwala with a chair and injured him during judicial proceedings. Senior Civil Judge Khalid Mahmood was hearing a case in his courtroom when the tragedy came to pass. The judge had to be treated at a local public hospital.
The same month, a group of lawyers in Lahore, flexed their muscle against law enforcement, beating up an assistant warden for trying to issue them a ticket for a violation of traffic rules.
In the last week of April, lawyers manhandled a man standing trial in a bank fraud case in Jaranwala in a special court for banking offences. The judge was in the middle of the proceedings when the lawyers attacked the suspect and started beating him up.
The rot would not have gotten this far had the seven lawyers who created a scene before Justice Qasim Khan of the Lahore High Court’s Multan Bench on July 24, 2017, been taken to task for their actions. A group of lawyers had encircled the judge in the courtroom, unfortunately, a not very rare spectacle. When the honourable judge asked them to get back to their seats, they forced him to leave the courtroom. Nor did they stop there. They proceeded to tear down the judge’s nameplate from the door and raised slogans against him on corridors of the court complex and on the streets. After Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, the then chief justice, summoned all judges working in Multan to the principal seat in Lahore, and initiated contempt of court proceedings against two leading lawyers, there was rioting at the LHC premises too. And yet, nothing happened.
Such incidents speak of unprofessional conduct among lawyers and bring a bad name to the profession. Punjab Bar Council and Pakistan Bar Council should see to it that the black sheep do not find protection in the ranks of professional lawyers. It is unfortunate that following the Multan incident, the Punjab Bar Council never condemned the conduct of the lawyers and the Supreme Court Bar Association referred to the incident as “petty”.
More than courts and judges, it seems, it is up to the lawyers themselves to take responsibility for violence on courtrooms and stop it. Lawyers earned respect of the civil society with their non-violent movement for the restoration of the superior judiciary in 2007. They must see to it that pointless violence by some lawyers does not lose it for them all. *