New Delhi: Riled by the selection of former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as the Bharatiya Janata Party's chief ministerial candidate in Delhi, lawyers in the city staged a major protest here on Thursday. The protesters demonstrated against Bedi by burning her effigy and raising slogans.

"It is really a very sad day because BJP has chosen Kiran Bedi as the CM candidate. We are only requesting BJP and the election leadership because we have been supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the very beginning and that she should not be treated as CM candidate," Delhi High Court Bar Association president Rajiv Khosla told ANI.

"She doesn't even deserve to be an MLA, she is a lady who doesn't believe in discussion, who doesn't believe in talks. She only believes in lathi. She has assaulted lawyers by brutal lathi-charge on lawyers. Except lathi-charge she has not done anything," he added.

According to reports, in the year 1988, Bedi, who was the Deputy Commissioner (North) then, ordered a lathi-charge on a group of Delhi Bar Association members who had gathered outside her office to protest against the handcuffing of one of their colleagues who was arrested on the charge of theft. The lawyers were seriously injured.

The reports said that the commission of enquiry led by DP Wadhwa, a sitting Delhi High Court judge, concluded that Agnihotri's arrest was "justified" but termed his handcuffing 'illegal'. It also described the police action as 'indiscriminate and unjustified'.