November 10, 2007	Saturday	Shawwal 28, 1428

LAHORE, Nov 9: For reasons not known to the media, Justice Faqir Muhammad Khokhar was not able to meet Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday even though he was given access to the residence of the detained judge by the rangers and police deployed there.

Justice Ramday later summed up the matter: “I was not able to meet him. That’s all I’ll say because he’s my colleague and I wouldn’t want to say anything else about him.”

While Justice Khokhar was given access to Ramday, representatives of civil society and the Pakistan Medical Association were not allowed to meet him.

Professor Dr Yasmeen Rashid, head of gynaecology at the King Edwards Medical College, recounted how she along with few of her colleagues went to Justice Ramday’s residence at 4pm to congratulate him for standing up against Musharraf’s unconstitutional measure of imposing emergency and salvaging the almost lost image of the judiciary by not taking oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO). “All we wanted to do was talk to him and present him with a bouquet. We were stopped by the security guards there,” said Professor Rashid.

Present outside Professor Yasmeen Rashid, Dr Ahmed Mohiyuddin, Dr Izhar Chaudhry, Dr Azeemuddin Zahid, Dr Saeed Elahi and a few others were all surprised when a government flagged car whizzed past them and was allowed to enter the premises of Justice Ramday. A few minutes later the same car was seen chauffeuring out of the same gate. From outside his residence, Prof Yasmeen rang Justice Ramday to let him know that she and a few of her colleagues had come to congratulate him but were not allowed entry.

“Ramday sahib told me that the man who had come to meet him in the official car was Justice Faqir Muhammad Khokhar but Ramday Sahib refused to even see him. If I’d known that it was Khokhar in that car I would have reviled and if nothing else thumped his car with my fists,” stated the infuriated Prof Yasmeen Rashid.