The infamous Kashmir sex racket had led to division between the lawyers of Srinagar and Jammu regions. While the Kashmir Bar Association has imposed restriction on any lawyer against defending of alleged accused involved in sex racket, the lawyer community of Jammu demands the transfer of the case from Srinagar to Jammu for a fair trail.
Jammu Bar Association has gone on indefinite strike in support of its demand. The Bar took the decision after one Jammu lawyer, Sunil Sethi, the brother of one accused Anil Sethi received threats while he had gone to Kashmir to plead the case of his brother.
In the past too, on several occasions, people from Jammu and Kashmir regions have confronted each other. The people of Jammu and Laddakh regions have supported the demands of separate state entity alleging that Kashmir has always dominated and supressed the aspirations and development of these two regions.
The Jammu Bar Association secretary, Abhinav Sharma told reporters that the strike would continue till the case is transferred to Jammu. The Kashmir Bar Association has no right to dictate terms and threaten lawyers from taking up any cases. They have intimidated former Jammu Bar Association, president Sunil Sethi, who had gone to defend his brother.
?Let them come here for some case, we would also react in similar manner,? he said. It must be mentioned here that since some top people are allegedly involved in the racket including two former ministers, a police and BSF officer and former additional advocate general, they were facing uncertain future after they failed to procure any lawyer in Kashmir to defend their case in the court.
The CBI has filed a charge sheet against nine of them in a Srinagar court. The Kashmir Bar Association in a statement had stated that it would expel any member who appears in the sex case. The Bar Association is a petitioner in the case, pleading the court to award severe punishments to the culprits.
Earlier on June 23, a Srinagar based lawyer had to drop the case of Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mohammad Ashraf Mir, after threats from women radical group Dukhtarayan-e-Millat.
The lawyer Maulvi Aijaz was shouted on, asking him how he had dared to take up the defence of a Police official who was allegedly responsible for ?auctioning the chastity of Kashmiri girls?. Maulvi Aijaz had taken up Mir'sdefence but, as claimed by him, he had dropped the same after the High Court Bar Association decided that no member of the Bar would plead the case of anybody accused in the sex racket. Eyewitnesses said that the female activists, shouting in English, on the lawyer engaged in an altercation and demanded a public apology from him. When the advocate found none coming to his rescue, he vanished from the spot and went towards the Bar office. He was again accosted by two fellow advocates and silenced to submission. Consequently, he had to drop the case. According to reports, he later told some colleagues over telephone that he had been ?harassed and threatened?.
