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Aug 29 lathi-charge: Hapur lawyers snub SIT, say probe biased
Bar council has called an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the issue and decide the future course of action.
Continuing their protest against the August 29 police lathi-charge on their colleagues, agitating Hapur lawyers have refused to record their statements before a three-member special investigation team (SIT) formed by the government to probe the incident.
The SIT, comprising Meerut divisional commissioner Selva Kumari J, IG (Meerut range) Nachiketa Jha and DIG (Moradabad range) Muniraj, reached Hapur on Friday to conduct its probe, as part of which the lawyers were requested to get their statements recorded.
Hapur Bar Association president Haji Aenul Haq said the lawyers didn’t trust the committee to do them justice. “Lawyers believe that the committee can’t do a fair probe and that it has been constituted to subside the issue,” he said, and suggested that the officials must include a retired judge and officials of the U.P. Bar Council in the committee for a fair probe.
The Council has called an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the issue and decide the future course of action.
Haq further said police registered a case on the complaint of two cops who misbehaved with lawyer Priyanka Tyagi on August 25, but refused to take any action against the erring cops on Tyagi’s complaint.
He observed that the lawyers waited for four days for justice, but protested on August 29 when police didn’t act on their complaint. Later, police lathi-charged on them and over a dozen lawyers were injured.
The SIT is expected to submit its report to the state government in a week’s time.
