HYDERABAD, May 21: Lawyers boycotted courts in Hyderabad on Monday to express solidarity with the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. They also held a general body meeting and staged a rally from the Civil Courts to the press club.

The general body meeting was presided over by the vice chairman of the Sindh Bar Council (SBC) Ameen Lakhani and attended by a number of lawyers and members of the SBC. High Court Bar Association (HCBA) Hyderabad president Abdul Sattar Kazi, general secretary Allah Bachayo Soomro, Hyderabad District Bar Association (HDBA) president Abdul Aziz Sheikh, general secretary Noorul Haq Qureshi, and various SBC members addressed the general body meeting.

Later, a rally led by HCBA Hyderabad president Abdul Sattar Kazi was brought out.

Activists of the component parties of the Hyderabad Grand Alliance lined Fatima Jinnah Road to welcome the participants. The lawyers then staged a token hunger strike in front of the Civil Courts.

Lawyers’ leaders addressing the rally, said that by rejecting the presidential reference against the chief justice, Pakistan’s lawyers and its people had given their verdict against the current dispensation. Calling May 12 the blackest day in the country’s history, they said that the legal community would reject any commission formed to probe the killings in Karachi and demanded the immediate arrest of the criminals involved. The speakers also demanded the resignation of President Musharraf, the formation of an independent judiciary and the reinstatement of the Justice Chaudhry. They called for the formation of a consensus interim national government and an independent election commission.

Our Naushahroferoz correspondent adds: Lawyers in Naushahroferoze, Moro, Kandiaro and Bhirya boycotted courts on Monday in protest against the presidential reference filed against Justice Chaudhry and the recent violence in Karachi. Similar protests were held in other cities of the province.