KARACHI: The legal proceedings remained suspended on Wednesday as lawyers observed a boycott of courts in protest against the militant attack on the police training centre in Quetta.

The countrywide protest call was given by the Pakistan Bar Council to condemn the attack in which 62 people, including cadets and soldiers, were killed.

Litigants suffered, courts wore a deserted look and hundreds of cases fixed for the day at the city courts and the district courts in Malir could not be taken up for hearing since the jail authorities did not send the undertrial prisoners to courts.

The lawyers also stayed away from legal proceedings at the Sindh High Court and the judges only took up urgent matters in their chambers while the legal work at special courts was also affected since lawyers did not turn up in courts.

Meanwhile, the Sindh Bar Council condemned the attack and “deplored the failure of the government and law enforcement agencies to abide by commitments of re-investigation, compensation and enhancement of security” after a suicide attack at a Quetta hospital in August and a bomb attack at the district courts in Mardan last month.

Published in Dawn October 27th, 2016