Ghaziabad Bar Association Moves Allahabad HC Seeking SIT Probe Into Court Lathicharge Violence Against Lawyers

The Ghaziabad Bar Association has moved the Allahabad High Court seeking an SIT investigation, under the direct supervision of the HC, into the recent lathi-charge violence against advocates in Ghaziabad Court. The Criminal Writ petition moved through Advocate Jawahir Yadav also prays for the issuance of a show cause notice to the District Magistrate by exercising powers under Article 215 of the Constitution of India. The prayer also includes restraining the respondents from taking action against the members of the bar pursuant to an FIR lodged against them and directing the Commissioner of Police to secure the CCTV footage of the district judge's court and the entire Court premises and forward it to the SIT for effective investigation. It may be noted that several videos of the lathi-charge incident are going viral on social media wherein police officials could be seen resorting to lathi-charge to disperse the lawyers inside the courtroom. At the same time, the lawyers could be seen throwing chairs. The writ petition states that the incident occurred after certain bar members approached the District and Sessions Judge Anil Kumar's court concerning a bail matter. The presiding officer allegedly refused to hear or transfer the matter to some other court. Pursuant to this, the petition claims, an argument broke out between the lawyers and the District Judge, after which the Judge got agitated, left his chair, came to the Dias, and started abusing the lawyers. Subsequently, he called the police, who brutally assaulted the bar members and the CRPF was deployed to the court premises at the District Judge's request. Against the backdrop of these claims, the Bar Association has stated that the purpose of filing the criminal plea is that the dignity of the judicial system is at stake and the members of the Bar Association Ghaziabad have been brutally assaulted by DM Concerned in utter disregard to the majesty of Court and rights of Advocates. The plea also avers that the District Judge, while issuing directions to the police officials to open fire upon the lawyers, completely exceeded its jurisdiction and acted in a manner detrimental to the District Judge's status and also contrary to the law laid down by the Supreme Court of India and the High Court. The plea states that the reason for seeking an investigation by the SIT is that the conduct of the Police Officials in throwing Chairs upon the advocates and assaulting them without any provocation and that, too, inside the courtroom warrants an in-depth investigation by an independent agency. The plea adds that since the allegations prima facie point towards the illegal and arbitrary act of the higher police officials as well as the Ld. District Judge, any investigation by the local police would be biased and one-sided. The matter is likely to come up for a hearing this week.

Ghaziabad Bar Association Moves Allahabad HC Seeking SIT Probe Into Court Lathicharge Violence Against Lawyers

Sparsh Upadhyay

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