HYDERABAD: The Sindh Police on Friday met the only demand of SSP Dr Farrukh Ali`s transfer within the 48-hour deadline set by agitating bar associations.

The SSP`s transfer was announced a few hours before the deadline was to expire at midnight intervening Friday and Saturday.

SSP Dr Farrukh Ali confirmed to Dawn in response to a WhatsApp message that he had been transferred on Friday night.

His transfer came amid a tussle between the Sindh Police and Hyderabad`s legal fraternity in the wake of the registration of an FIR registered by the traffic police against an advocate, Ali Raza Bozdar, whose car with tinted glasses and fancy registration plate was also briefly detained on February 3.

The agitating lawyers had blocked the Hyderabad bypass and held a sit-in for the four following days demanding withdrawal of the FIR.

They later put forward a single demand, i.e. transfer of the SSP. In order to defuse tension, the SSP was sent on forced leave but lawyers resumed their agitation when he was allowed to resume his charge only a week later and was accorded a hero`s welcome by his colleagues.

The lawyers have been boycotting court proceedings for over a week now. At a recently held event, All Sindh Lawyers Convention, the agitating lawyers had announced that they would hold a `long march` and later a demonstration outside CM House in Karachi on Saturday (March 8) if the SSP was not transferred by Friday-Saturday midnight.

Meanwhile, the Hyderabad District Bar Association President Ashar Khokhar told Dawn on Friday evening that the long march would still be held on Saturday because all the bars in Sindh had been mobilised.

`The protest will now be against the controversial six canals project,` he said.

Adeel Hussain Chandio has been posted as the Hyderabad SSP following Dr Farrukh Ali`s transfer.

It`s for a third time that Chandio has been posted as the Hyderabad SSP. He had last held the post in the 2020 pandemic.