11 July 2004	Sunday	22 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

GUJRAT, July 10: A lawyer of the District Bar Association has requested the Saddar police station to register a case against the Gujrat DPO, two DSPs and 41 other policemen, who had allegedly kept him and other colleagues into illegal custody the other day.

In a written application, he alleged that the police detained them on July 8 when they were on their way to Lahore to participate in a protest rally against the DPO.

Chaudhry Aslam Langay, whose plea was not entertained till late Saturday, said he along with advocates Chaudhry Akram, Chaudhry Arshad and Khalid Pervez, had boarded a Lahore-bound bus to participate in a rally when some policemen held them near the Chenab Bridge. He said the police took them to a wagon in which 11 lawyers were already being taken to police station.

He quoted the policemen as saying that they had been following the instructions of their higher-ups. "Few minutes before the arrival of a court bailiff, they took us to Jalalpur Jattan Saddar police station where they kept us for two hours and later released us," he alleged.

He demanded that a case should be registered against DPO Raja Munawar Husain, DSP (Headquarters) Mahmoodul Hassan, DSP (City) Rana Shahid, Civil Lines SHO Zafar Hanjra and 40 other policemen.

Sources told Dawn that the lawyers were neither stopped from going to Lahore nor were they illegally detained. They said the local lawyers were unaware of the fact that their colleagues in Lahore had postponed the protest meeting for four days after negotiations with the government.

The lawyers, they said, returned voluntarily when they learnt about the postponement of the agitation.