March 18, 2007	Sunday	Safar 28, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, March 17: President Islamabad Bar Association Haroonur Rasheed is being kept under general anaesthesia since he fractured his skull in the events that surrounded Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’s appearance at the Supreme Court on Friday.

Doctors attending him at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) described his condition on Saturday as “critical but stable”.

Mr Rasheed was among several lawyers who had climbed on the roof of the car bringing the chief justice to the court and fell off while the car was negotiating a sharp corner near Marriott Hotel.

Doctors at the Federal Government Services Hospital, where he was rushed to, found his skull broken and part of the brain crushed and referred him to Pims.

There he is being kept under anaesthesia in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU), connected to a ventilator as he was not breathing normally.

“We will remove the ventilator on Monday if he starts breathing normally,” doctors told Dawn. “Otherwise he will be taken for a CT-Scan”.

Mrs Rasheed, when contacted on phone, had more questions than answers. Sobbing, she wanted to know: “Did you see him? How was he? Will he recover? How soon?”

She responded to comforting words by pleading “pray for him”.

Many lawyers were seen in the ICU corridor inquiring about their colleague.