New Delhi: A Delhi court has stayed the operation of search warrants issued by Delhi Police against lawyer Mehmood Pracha, who is representing several Delhi violence accused.Pracha’s office was searched by nearly 100 personnel of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell yesterday, March 9. The lawyer had questioned the timing of the action, noting that police knew he would be away from office and cross-examining a witness in a case following investigation by the same Special Cell.“The officer in the case is the same who has ordered the raids. They took a warrant and had two weeks to raid my office, but they chose to do it today,” he told Hindustan Times.He had submitted a complaint to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on Tuesday. The court had summoned the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) on Wednesday at 10.30 am and eventually stayed the operation of the warrants.Bar and Bench has reported that the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at the Patiala House court, Pankaj Sharma, will pronounce orders on March 12.Also watch | Lawyers Take Out March in Delhi, Demand ‘Advocate Protection Act’ Be PassedTo PTI, Pracha has said that the raids were and effort to silence his voice. In August, 2020, Pracha had told The Wire that he was being framed for representing the riots accused, many of whom are believed to have been innocent and wrongfully implicated in a partisan investigation.A special cell team of Delhi police had earlier raided Pracha’s office on December 24, 2020, seizing his computer and various documents, which contain case details and thus made the police’s action illegal.The raid was viewed as an attack on legal practitioners and was criticised by prominent lawyers. Pracha had then said that the raids had been conducted at the behest of Union home minister Amit Shah because he was trying to establish Shah’s links with the violence in northeast Delhi.