Lawyers protest in Srinagar against NIA notice to Bar president Mian Qayoom

The protesters who had assembled outside the Jammu and Kashmir High Court complex were raising slogans against the NIA. Lawyers on Tuesday staged a protest in Srinagar against the summoning of High Court Bar Association president Mian Abdul Qayoom for questioning by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a case related to funding of “subversive activities” in Kashmir. The protesters who had assembled outside the Jammu and Kashmir High Court complex were raising slogans against the NIA They were carrying placards with messages like ‘Stop persecuting lawyers though NIA’ and ‘Don’t use NIA to suppress and subjugate voice of people’.Senior lawyer Zaffar A Shah said that lawyers will continue to stay away from work until Qayoom returns “with dignity” to the Valley.Qayoom has been asked to reach the Delhi office of the NIA tomorrow to “answer certain questions” related to the funding case. “We feel that the (NIA) notice is not bona fide. It is the outcome of a design, of a conspiracy to lower down the credibility of our public men,” Shah told journalists. He said that the NIA could have recorded the statement of Qayoom in Srinagar as well. “We know Mr Mian Qayoom. He is not involved in any manner in this case at all but at the same time if the NIA wanted to record his statement or to question him, we strongly condemn his summoning to New Delhi. The same thing could have been done even at Srinagar if it was a simple case of recording the statement for a witness or seeking information from him,” said Shah. By summoning him to New Delhi, he said, “we feel that our respectable persons are being humiliated”. “We feel NIA is abusing its authority. We feel process of law is being abused,” said Shah.