GUJRAT, June 29: Civil Lines police on Monday night registered a case on various charges against 20 lawyers, including the DBA president, acting president and secretary-general. However, the police did not lodge a case on the complaint of bar's acting secretary-general Asghar Shaheen against the DPO and the PML activists on several charges.

Advocate Fakhar Nisar is the complainant of the FIR No 521 lodged under sections 324/409, 420/468, 471/506, 395/427, 148/149 and 109 of the PPC. He said a bar meeting had been convened on June 28 to take up a requisition against him and his colleagues.

About 11:10am, there were hardly 92 members and advocates Asjad Javed Ghurral, Farooq Awan and Asghar Ali Ghurral told the acting office-bearers and other members that the bar quorum was incomplete because 321 members were needed to pass such a requisition.

Therefore, he said, a majority of the lawyers was not in favour of the move. Meanwhile, several lawyers started hooting and abused him, and Asjad Ghurral, Asghar Ghurral and Malik Iftikhar, he alleged.

They said they would murder him and his colleagues, and started throwing chairs on them. They also snatched Rs7,500 in cash from him and calling cards and some other documents from other lawyers.

Besides, some men of advocate Tufail also forcibly entered the bar room and started beating them and ransacked the office, he said, adding they also took away record. Mr Nisar further alleged that the suspects had committed the offence at the behest of bar president Tariq Javed, and demanded that the police took legal action.

Sources claimed that the district and sessions judge had granted interim bail to 18 of the lawyers while advocates Asghar Ranjha and Akhtar Javed had been arrested by the police.

Meanwhile, bar acting secretary-general Asghar Shaheen had submitted a written application with the police for registration of a case against DPO Raja Munawar Husain, former MC chairman Chaudhry Tufail, union council Nazims - Rana Maqsood and Javed Akhtar Colowal - and others.

He alleged that more than 500 men armed men ransacked the bar room and beat up lawyers at the behest of the aforementioned people. As a result, advocates Iqbal Behalpur, Khalid Shah, Shahzad Aslam, Tajamul Shah, Munir Bajwa and Habib Alam Naqvi suffered injuries. However, no case was registered till the filing of this report.