Lawyers in Uttar Pradesh remained on strike today in protest of the police brutality against a senior lawyer in the Etah district of Agra division. Effigies of the UP Police were burned in Etah and Lawyers took out protest marches in other districts of UP. The Bar Council of India has taken strong exception to this incident and has demanded strict action against the guilty policemen.

Reportedly, for the past three weeks, the lawyer Rajendra Sharma had been staging a sit-in against the repeated attempts allegedly by a local BJP politician to grab his house, when on Monday, 21st December, the police allegedly broke into his house, thrashing him badly and dragging him down the street.

Sharma has been the Etah District Government Counsel for almost twenty years and is presently a special counsel to the state government in the Etah district court.

Sharma’s daughter, who is also a lawyer, was also arrested along with the rest of the family, and the family was dispossessed from the house by the police force, despite the fact that the dispute of the house property was pending in the High Court and the court had ordered a status quo on the property. A case under SC/ST act as well as 307 IPC has been registered against the lawyer and his family.

After a video of the lawyer being beaten and dragged through the street by the police became viral on social media, the UP Bar Council took strong exception to the police brutality against Sharma who is also suffering from Kidney disease and is surviving on just one kidney.

Bar Council Chairman Janki Sharan Pandey said that the incident is very serious and the way the police has acted in this matter, is highly objectionable. He said that on Saturday, the lawyers of all districts in Uttar Pradesh will not work at the Courts and will lead protest marches, serving memorandums to their respective District Magistrates against the police brutality.

Taking cognizance of the incident, the Bar Council of India also issued a statement condemning the police brutality, calling it as an ‘Open Gundagardi of Uttar Pradesh Police’. The Bar Council Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said that the Bar Council of India has taken a very serious notice of the incident where a lawyer, who was in a lawyer’s dress, was brutally beaten and dragged by the police in Etah.

He said that the Bar Council of India has resolved to write to the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court to immediate steps to find out the guilty police personnel and issue a direction of the UP Government to immediately suspend, transfer and terminate the guilty cops.

In the wake of the current slew of criminal activities in Uttar Pradesh, the UP Government is already in the docks for not being able to control crime in the state. Now, with the legal fraternity getting riled up against the government on this matter, the Yogi government may have to take quick action otherwise the matter could slip out of its hands.