Lawyers take to Lahore streets with guns to celebrate victory in bar polls

Multiple videos of the Lahore-based lawyers have emerged, wherein they can be seen doing aerial firing on the streets of the city to celebrate the victory of their candidate in the Punjab Bar Council elections.

In the un-dated videos that are being circulated in Whatsapp groups and social media, the lawyers can be seen firing indiscriminately while the police officials looked on.

They had all sorts of guns — and ammunition, enough to take down an army. AK47s, M-16, G-3s — all prohibited bore weapons — can be seen in the video along with different models of handguns.

Aerial firing is banned in Pakistan, and people involved in this practice can be booked under multiple sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997.

Following the outrage on social media, Civil Lines police booked several unidentified lawyers on the charge of aerial firing. Police, however, said it will go ahead with the probe once the lawyers are identified.

On Nov 30, The News reported that Kamran Bashir Mughal, Sadiq Irfan Tarar, Adeeb Aslam Bhindar, Muhammad Ahmed Qayyum and Hafiz Abdul Naeem and 11 others had won the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) elections held on 16 seats in Lahore.

A low turnout was seen in the election for 75-member house of Punjab Bar Council (PbBC), the provincial regulatory body of the legal fraternity, on Saturday for a five-year term of 2020-25 apparently due to Covid-19 pandemic, it reported.