LAHORE, July 10: The Punjab Bar Council's discipline committee on Saturday suspended the professional licence of former MNA from Gujrat Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad Dhudra and sent the case of 'misconduct' to the Lahore High Court tribunal.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the committee, which found Mr Dhudra guilty of misconduct by getting criminal cases registered against certain members and office-bearers of the Gujrat bar, including its president Chaudhry Tariq Javed Warraich, during their protest against DPO Raja Munawar Husain.

According to another decision, the committee withdrew notices for indiscipline against 21 other members of the Gujrat bar after their assurance that they supported the cause of lawyers against the DPO. In their written reply, they stated that they were also on strike along with other Gujrat bar members and their support for the DPO was out of question. The PBC's committee had issued notices to 22 lawyers after cases were registered against them.

Mr Dhudra was the complainant in the case registered on July 27, a day ahead of the unprecedented attack on the Gujrat bar.

Meanwhile, the bar condemned the provincial government for "buying time to attend the dispute." In a resolution, the PBC's Inter-Provincial Bar Councils Relations Committee, which met here on Saturday with its president Chaudhry Khawar Mahmood Khatana in the chair, said the government was showing no signs of attending the conflict and all measures seemed to hoodwink the legal community.

Demanding the transfer of the Gujrat DPO, the resolution wondered if the police officer was so important for the rulers that the whole legal fraternity had been annoyed. It said the rulers should look beyond the district and resolve the issue with sagacity.

The resolution supported the action of the Gujrat lawyers and said the whole community stood behind them in the hour of trial.

The committee's meeting was convened after the vice-chairpersons from Sindh and the NWFP expressed their inability to participate. Besides, PBC vice-chairperson Tanvirur Rahman Randhawa was handicapped by the illness of his father. Still, the council leaders hoped the VCs from Balochistan and Azad Kashmir might participate. However, none of the vice-chairpersons turned up and they intimated their decision to the bar.

Mr Khatana told Dawn that the participants felt about the incident on June 28 when some assailants barged into the Gujrat bar and beat up lawyers. He said the incident had sent a shock wave across the country.It was because of the significance of the dispute that the PBC had convened a meeting of the Lawyers Joint Action Committee in Islamabad next week.