These days, their footage is all over the Pakistani news channels. Lawyers, dressed in black suits and ties, on the attack.

Every few days seem to bring a new incident; the beating of a policeman; a scuffle with members of the press outside the high court in Lahore.

The newspapers scream that lawyers have become a public menace. The police are incensed.

"Lawyers used to be a very gentle people," says superintendent Sohail Sukhera of Lahore police force. "They were polite and educated. But the last couple of years have converted them into an absolutely different commodity."

He says that, in the last month, there have been 18 cases of assaults carried out by lawyers in Lahore alone.

"In one case, lawyers broke the leg of a police inspector. Others have had their skulls exposed when lawyers have hit them on the head with stones or chair legs. It's really uncalled for."

Visibly upset

Too embarrassed to talk to us at the police station at which he works, we go to meet one of the victims elsewhere.

He is a 52-year-old officer, Fakir Muhammed.

A cameraman filmed the moment he was punched and slapped and harassed by lawyers at the high court.

"I had just testified against a man accused of kidnapping a woman," he says. "As I was leaving the court, I was surrounded by 10 or 11 lawyers."

Mr Muhammed is visibly upset as he recounts how one snatched and broke his glasses before a few of the others tore his uniform and beat him.

"They really hurt me and it was so sudden," he says.

"I tried to reason with them but they didn't listen and I still have no idea what it was about. I feel so insulted. My whole department looks at me as the guy that got beaten up. It's humiliating."

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