KARACHI, Dec 13: The deposed chief justice of the Sindh High Court, Sabihuddin Ahmed, said that the establishment could not order the removal of a judge and the judiciary could not function independently under the influence of the establishment.

“Despite the fact that most of the issues here are related to the establishment, we try to provide justice to the people according to the constitution. Judiciary must be independent of all sorts of pressure as it is essential in a civilised society”, he said.

The ousted chief justice was speaking at the Karachi Bar Association’s annual dinner held at the Lawyers’ Club on Wednesday night. He said that the enthusiasm of the lawyers’ fraternity reflected its commitments to the Constitution and the law.

He urged the lawyers to be patient as it was a long struggle for the independence of the judiciary.

Condemning the suspension of the Constitution and promulgation of the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), the KBA president, Iftikhar Javaid Qazi, said that the government wanted control over the judiciary so as to give legal cover to the extra-constitutional actions taken by President Musharraf’s regime.

He paid rich tribute to those judges who did not take oath under the PCO and said that those judges were the great sons and heroes of the nation and their role would be a guideline for the generations to come.

He also urged the government to release all the detained lawyers and withdraw fake cases registered against them. KBA General Secretary Naeem Qureshi also spoke.

Deposed judges of the Sindh High Court, Sarmad Jalal Osmani, Gulzar Ahmed, Athar Saeed, Salman Ansari, Maqbool Baqar, Musheer Alam, Anwar Saeed Jamali, Fasial Arab, Arshad Suraj Memon, the former chief justice of Pakistan, Sajjad Ali Shah, and the newly-elected president of the SHCBA, Rasheed A Razvi, attended the dinner. However, all those judges who had taken an oath under the PCO were not invited on the occasion.