Rashid Gondal is the most controversial lawyer of the bar till date. Judges hate him. Police hate him. Politicians hate him. Bureaucracy hate him. Most lawyers hate him.
Judges hate him because he is blunt and has the ability of calling a corrupt a corrupt on his face. Contempt of court notice bothers him only to an extent of an unpaid electricity bill. Judges across the province know him as a person who can single-handedly launch a movement against an incompetent judge forcing him to get transferred from the city.
Police hate him as he is outspoken against the rampant corruption in the department. He does not spare the top bosses of the district police from his criticism. He has to his credit, transfers of many corrupts police officials. He has wrecked the carriers of quite a few police officials by making public their corruption tales.
Gondal has faced the evil moves of the police with bravery. Police once fabricated a case against him for allegedly molesting two women. He still credits the police’s incompetency for his acquittal from that case as the place of occurrence of the ‘molestation’ mentioned in the police report was the city courts where at any time around 500 people are present. No human can think of molesting women at such a male-crowded place.
The police fabricated the case against him as he was very outspoken against a police superintendent who happened to be the nephew of some army general.
Politicians have also their reasons to hate him. Gondal is always available to be engaged by anyone who is a political victim of rulers. His advocacy skills get relief for the poor people who cannot withstand the pressures of MNAs and MPAs. Presently, he is defending two brothers for free - who are nephews of an ex-senator and cousins of two sitting MNAs - invoking the wrath of the politicians. The only crime the two boys have committed is they speak against the corruption of their politician cousins.
Rashid Gondal is a fearless public speaker and is known to have addressed public gatherings in the home towns of ruling politicians against them.
He hates the snobbish attitude of bureaucracy and bureaucrats reciprocate the feeling. From the glorious deputy commissioners to ‘humble’ executive district officers, he has spared none.
If anyone is Jhelum district has a grievance against any lawyer, the only person they know will represent them in the court is Rashid Gondal. Lawyers normally do not appear against their brothers-in-robes. He is an exception. A dozen or so lawyers and their friends hate him for this reason.
During his last stint in the office, he ordered the checking of the degrees of all lawyers and found 13 lawyers having fake degrees. He cancelled their memberships. The lawyers with fake degrees challenged the move in the bar council and the case is pending for the past 7 years and is not likely to be decided due to reasons best known to the bar council’s ‘honest’ members. The ‘fake lawyers’ do not appear in the courts but they always vote against him.
Elements in police, bureaucracy, judiciary and lawyers make an alliance against him during his election campaigns which costs him heavily. He always wins or looses elections due to a very small number of votes. His elections polarise the otherwise neutral Jhelum bar.
So how does he win the elections? He gets sympathy votes for his honesty. All the people against him know one thing for sure that he is honest. And why he has lost 3 elections? Honesty is not always appreciated.
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