Punjab Bar Council (PBC) Vice Chairman Shahnawaz Ismail said on Wednesday that the lawyers’ attack at the hospital in Lahore is their reaction to a video that went viral the previous day, a private TV channel reported.
Ismail said that a couple of days ago, the doctors and hospital staff at the PIC beat up a lawyer who had brought his mother to the hospital for treatment. He said that the health of the lawyer’s mother had deteriorated as a result of doctors’ negligence. “When we filed a case against those responsible, police didn’t arrest anyone,” he said. “This is only a reaction to the video that went viral yesterday and doctors are responsible for the clash that took place,” he claimed.
Ismail was referring to the video of a doctor who was saying that when a group of lawyers went to the Punjab Secretariat and also requested the Punjab IGP to register cases against doctors, they were told that nothing could be done about it. The video ends with the doctor making fun of lawyers and talking about how they were beaten up.
Protesters fire gunshots, smash windowpanes, doors and equipment at PIC, and set several vehicles on fire
On November 24, a lawyer named Azeem Sindhu had his mother admitted to the PIC. While his mother was being treated, lawyers accused the PIC doctors of being negligent. A scuffle broke out between a group of lawyers and doctors in the hospital resulting in both parties registering cases against each other. The next day, doctors protested against lawyers and staged a sit-in at Jail Road. The Grand Health Alliance also took part in the sit-in protest. On the other hand, lawyers protested by staging a sit-in of their own at the Civil Secretariat outside the office of the chief secretary. Before storming the emergency ward of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) on Wednesday, a lawyer recorded a live video in which he threatened the doctors. “Look at the sea of lawyers. Today, doctors will have to undergo bypass and have stents inserted in them,” a lawyer can be heard saying in the video. “We will enter the hospital and beat them [doctors] up.”
