Lawyers in Uttar Pradesh boycott work over Hapur lathi-charge incident

Lawyers across Uttar Pradesh are on a three-day strike beginning Monday to protest the alleged police lathi-charge on advocates in Hapur district last week.

The decision to go on strike was taken at a meeting of the Uttar Pradesh Bar Council on Sunday.

'On the call of the Bar Council we are on strike. We will be meeting the district magistrate and hand him over a memorandum of our demands,' General Secretary, Lucknow Bar Association, Kuldeep Narain Mishra told PTI.

The Council has demanded transfer of the Hapur District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police, lodging of FIR against policemen, withdrawing fake cases against lawyers and compensation to lawyers injured in the Hapur lathi-charge.

Police had allegedly lathi-charged lawyers on August 29 when they were protesting against the registration of a case against a woman advocate and her father around a week ago.

The case was registered following a confrontation between the woman lawyer and police when she was going to Ghaziabad in her car.

On August 30, police had registered an FIR against 17 lawyers and over 250 unidentified people at City police station in Hapur over protest by some advocates at the tehsil crossing last week.

The state government had constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by the Meerut Commissioner and IG, Meerut and DIG, Moradabad as its members to probe the Hapur incident.

The Council had, however, demanded inclusion of a retired Supreme Court or high court judge in the SIT.