An altercation and exchange of hot words between two lawyers and a judicial magistrate earlier had led to the registration of an FIR against the lawyers by the judicial magistrate in question.
The two lawyers involved had moved for bail before arrest before the District and Sessions Judge (DSJ).
The DSJ had called the two lawyers and the president of the Lahore District Bar Association (LDBA) to his chambers on Thursday, ostensibly to find an appropriate resolution of the unfortunate incident.
Instead of calming the troubled waters, the DSJ saw it fit in his wisdom to order the police contingent present outside his chambers to arrest the two lawyers. Both men resisted arrest and were helped by the LDBA president accompanying them. This resulted in at least two of them, if not all three, being manhandled by the police.
The incident inflamed the lawyers' community, whose vociferous protest produced an ugly situation when the DSJ's chambers were surrounded by slogan chanting lawyers. The agitating lawyers then went on to ransack the Sessions Court and even set some furniture on fire outside.
The situation was only saved from getting further out of hand by the intervention of the Lahore High Court Bar Association president, who, after failing to persuade the lawyers to calm down and desist, whisked the besieged judge away in his own car.
As if all this were not bad enough, the lawyers' protest procession on Friday again took a violent turn before the DSJ's chambers, and resulted in clashes with the police and injuries to both lawyers and the law enforcers.
The enraged lawyers damaged cars and destroyed property wherever they could. The lawyers' call for a boycott of the courts until the DSJ and the judicial magistrate are transferred has been answered by the resignations of around a hundred judges and magistrates plus judicial officers.
Friday's events have persuaded the agitating lawyers to now also call for the removal of the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court on the allegation that he is supporting the DSJ and the magistrate who are the original targets of the lawyers' anger.
Unless the confrontation is defused quickly, it could get a whole lot worse. Naturally, court work and the litigants' interests have been the first to suffer. Our judicial system, given the backlog of cases, can hardly afford any further disruption to the normal functioning of the courts.
The responsibility for restoring normal functioning lies on both sides in this dispute. The hotheads amongst the lawyers need to be restrained by their senior and calmer colleagues.
The judiciary too, for the sake of its own dignity and respect as much as for resolving the stand-off, needs to find a civilised solution to the situation to restore some measure of mutual respect and a healthy relationship between the Bar and the Bench.
It goes without saying that this kind of troubling breakdown between the Bar and the Bench is unacceptable in any civilised society.
Unfortunately, it is becoming more frequent in recent years. The judiciary, and particularly the lower judiciary, has much to answer for in terms of lost confidence and respect from the public as well as lawyers.
The lawyers too, sworn as they are to uphold the law, do their cause, no matter how justified, not much good by resorting to taking the law into their own hands and behaving more like street hooligans than responsible members of their profession.
It would be appropriate if the higher judicial authorities were to summon the parties and try to repair the breach in what is a symbiotic relationship critical to the credibility of the justice system.