LAHORE, Aug 23: The Lahore High Court Bar Association announced on Saturday that it would set up a protest camp tomorrow (Monday) to protest “negligence” of the provincial government in arresting the police officials accused of mishandling an operation in the Sialkot jail incident last month.

LHCBA President Hafiz Abdul Rahman Ansari and other office-bearers told newsmen that they had invited the legal heirs of the four deceased judges — Shehryar Bokhari, Sagheer Anwar, Asif Mumtaz Cheema and Shahid Munir Ranjha — to the protest camp.

“We want to make it clear to the provincial government that the association won’t let the culprits off the hook, as the killings of the four judges were an unprecedented tragedy in the judicial history of Pakistan. We demand that the accused police officials should be arrested forthwith irrespective of their influence and links,” Mr Ansari urged the government.

He expressed concern over delay in taking action against the accused, believing that no real progress had been made regarding the investigation into the incident even after a lapse of one month.

The LHCBA president claimed that all the findings published in the press so far had boiled down to a single common fact that the police officials, who carried out the operation in the Sialkot jail, were responsible for the death of the four judges.

“To make things more mysterious, the LHC fact-finding commission has decided not to make its report public till the completion of the police investigation the fate of which is known to none.”

The LHCBA officer-bearers also accused the Punjab chief minister of having failed to control increasing crime rate in the province.