Bar Assn members thrash youth during protest

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 10

A protest by lawyers of the district courts turned ugly as a few of them mercilessly thrashed a youth during a road block organised by the legal fraternity. The victim, identified as Manjinder Singh, a resident of Mohkampura, was accompanying his father, Gurmej Singh, a retired Subedar to Army hospital when the incident occurred.

Gurmej Singh said his son had requested the lawyers, blocking the road, to let them pass as he was in pain. He said that he suffered from a heart ailment and they were going to hospital. The family so far has not filed any police complaint. “We do not have the power or the resources to fight a legal battle with the lawyers’ body,” he said.

Members of the Amritsar Bar Association had today staged a protest against the police for allegedly implicating a lawyer, Balwinder Singh Gill, in a hit-and-run case that had occurred on December 5 last year.

Gill said he had received a phone call from the Gumtala police post on December 29, stating that his car was found involved in an accident at the Gumtala bypass. He said when he reached the police station, he found that the number of the car mentioned in the complaint was not his.

“I clicked a photograph of the complaint document and came back home. A few days later, I again received a call and was asked to visit the police station again. This time, a new complaint application was there and the number of my car was mentioned in it,” he said, alleging that the police was trying to implicate him.

After the protest today, senior police officials stayed the proceedings in the case till the inquiry into the accident was complete. Bar Association president Pardeep Saini, who led the protest, said they would not allow anybody to implicate a lawyer in a false case.