THE ugly courtroom scenes in Lahore on Tuesday have been quickly linked to the increasingly violent ways of sections of the lawyers’ community. A legal team from lawyer Asma Jahangir’s office, together with its client, was physically assaulted and bombarded with invectives as it tried to exercise a basic right: the team sought to establish that its client had been aggrieved, and petitioned the court for redress. It was a habeas corpus case, and the use of physical violence and coarse language, according to reports, was linked to the alleged involvement of a lawyer — even though the petition did not mention his name. Without getting into the details of the case, the spectacle may well be taken as a kind of ‘admission’ by the attackers. After all, would lawyers with a powerful argument to support their own claims feel the need to physically go after those on the other side?

However incredulous it may sound to some, a day later, one version doing the rounds explained that it was actually an individual — long discarded by the bar and not linked to the case at all — who had masterminded the episode to settle an old score. If this is true, it merits an investigation of its own. Whatever the case, there is much recent evidence of an increasing tendency among lawyers to take the law into their own hands. There have been instances where it has appeared practically impossible to hold any kind of probe into criminal cases in which lawyers themselves have been implicated. The bar has repeatedly been asked to do something about it but there has been little by way of reform. According to one bleak reading of the situation, it is no more possible for legal circles to even discuss ways and means to fight the growing urge of lawyers to resort to physical violence, let alone devise a strategy for achieving that goal. It cannot get any worse. The bar must come up with an effective remedy soon.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2017