Zubair Qureshi
District administration of Islamabad as well as the capital police failed to maintain decorum within the Islamabad High Court (IHC) and outside the premises on Tuesday during hearing of appeals of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and her husband Capt Safdar against their convictions in the Avenfield reference.
This lack of coordination and poor preparedness among various departments of the Islamabad District Administration was evident when it came to dealing with the senior leadership of the major opposition party of the country, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and other leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) when they arrived at the court to attend hearing.
Surprisingly, the police had cordoned off all the routes leading to the building of the IHC from all sides at a point that was almost at a distance of two miles and apart from the workers of the PML-N, former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, ex-Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, PML-N KP President Amir Muqam and a large number of MNAs and MPAs of the party had to park their vehicles and walk to the court. However having walked the entire path didn’t pay off and they were told by the policemen at the checkpoints they could not enter the court.
The situation grew tense when the ex-premier demanded of the junior level staff under which authority they were holding him back as they didn’t have any answer to that question.
At this point neither the police nor the administration had any senior representative who could calm down the situation and the former premier and his cabinet members were disregarded by police and they had to return without having any justification from the district administration for this unruly act.
Not only senior politicians and members of the Parliament, even the members of the Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA), staff members of the Islamabad High Court were also stopped at the checkpoints and were allowed to enter only after they registered a strong protest and threatened to go on strike.
A meeting of the IHC Bar soon after the hearing of the appeals of Nawaz Sharif and his family, taking strong notice of the police and district administration’s poor coordination warned in future if the bar was not taken into confidence by the police or the ICT administration, the Bar will be compelled to take legal action against them.
The meeting that was chaired by the IHCBA President Chaudhry Haseeb Advocate expressed disappointment at the unruly and rude behavior of the policemen deployed outside the court building at the arrival of Maryam Nawaz Sharif and other senior leadership of the PML-N to maintain law and order. “Instead of maintaining law and order and decorum they (police) misbehaved with the senior lawyers and members of the Bar and allowed them to get inside the building only after intervention of the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the IHC Athar Minallah,” said Chaudhry Haseeb while talking to Pakistan Observer later. Lawyers and litigants appearing in other cases also met the same treatment and at the time of court hearing, all the senior officials of the ICT and Police had switched off their phones, that speak volumes about their professionalism and sense of responsibility, he added.
