Advocates staged a day-long symbolic hunger strike at Tehsil Chowk in Jabalpur demanding implementation of Advocate Protection Act in Madhya Pradesh. Dheeraj Singh Thakur, an advocate in Madhya Pradesh High Court and convener of National University of Students’ Council, led the protest in the presence of senior advocates. Dheeraj Singh Thakur stated that implementing the Advocate Protection Act in the State is essential to ensure safety of advocates. He stated that this protest is currently being conducted as a one-day symbolic hunger strike, but fellow advocates will intensify it in the future. Expressing deep anger over shooting of an advocate in broad daylight in Shivpuri, he said that this incident has created an atmosphere of fear among advocates. If advocates themselves are not safe, how will litigants access justice and how will public faith in the judicial system be maintained.

 

The protest was staged in Madhya Pradesh High Court Bar Association Vice President Prashant Awasthi and senior advocate P C Paliwal expressed support. Advocate Aseem Trivedi stated that lawyers are an important pillar of the Constitution and that the incident involving the lawyer in Shivpuri is extremely sad and condemnable. Throughout the day, lawyers arrived at the protest site one by one and signed letters of support. District Bar Association President Manish Mishra broke the fast by offering juice. Several lawyers were present during the protest, including Radheshyam Agarwal, Satendra Jyotishi, Aman Sharma, Bhavana Nigam, Ashok Tomar, Ramratan Yadav, Gopal Hunka, Renuwala Singh, Rajesh Dubey, Deepak Raghuvanshi, Ravindra Dutt, Sachin Yadav, R D Singh, Vineet Tehnuguria, Chitransh Srivastava, Yashwardhan Jain, D K Paroha, Jayesh Tiwari, Mohsin Khan, Amit Kohli, Sandeep Namdev, Haji Jayauddin, Satish Kumar Singraha, Praveen Jain, Gaurav Verma, Shivam Yadav, and J K Lodhi.