Delhi Sikh gurdwara body offers legal aid to all booked
NEW DELHI: Inside a room of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee’s (DSGMC) office, several families from Punjab who have come to the Capital after learning that their relatives were arrested for the violence on Republic Day wait .
These families are waiting for their turn to meet with lawyers inside the conference hall of the committee’s office.
It is a busy room — advocates noting details of the arrested persons, getting signatures of their relatives, explaining to them how the legal battle has just begun and is to be fought. Outside the room, officials of DSGMC are helping make photocopies of court documents, and identity-proof records of the men who have been arrested by the Delhi Police for R-day violence. From directly speaking to the families, to circulating messages and offering pro-bono legal services on the social media groups of villages in Punjab and Haryana — it is this room that lawyers representing the accused have set up base.
Delhi Police have intensified their investigations in the violence and are making arrests every day. The DSGMC, to counter this, has brought together lawyers from across the city in one room to ensure that no arrested person is deprived of legal representation in the city courts.
All the lawyers working on cases of the arrested accused are doing so pro-bono. Of the 134 persons arrested, DSGMC officials said, they have already found lawyers to represent more than half.
On Monday, three people — Jaswinder Singh, Lovepreet Singh and Ramandeep Singh — who were represented by such lawyers, managed to get bail. The bail hearing of other people is on at different city courts.
“We were concerned about many innocent farmers languishing in jail and thus pitched in to help them. My team and I managed to get bail for three people,” said Vikas Yadav, a lawyer representing an arrested suspect. The lawyers are also visiting Delhi’s Tihar jail to meet the arrested persons and offering them free legal aid.
Lawyers however added that they are selective when choosing their clients. The DSGMC is also vetting the names of the arrested people from the records of the farmer unions.
Manjinder Singh Sirsa, former Delhi MLA and president of the DSGMC, said, the committee is in touch with the farmer unions protesting at the three borders.