Lawyers of Orissa High Court on Friday decided to continue with their cease work till the “erring policemen involved in the assault on their colleague are arrested”, the bar association said.

The court will reopen after the Puja vacation on October 25. The lawyers will continue to defy the Supreme Court order on their cease work for at least till October 26.

The lawyers have been on indefinite strike for 43 days following the alleged assault on a colleague near the fish market at Nuabazaar on August 28. They have been demanding arrest of all the police personnel involved in the assault.

The bar association decided in a general body meeting on Friday that the cease work would continue till the guilty policemen were arrested and the decision would be reviewed on October 26, said association secretary Satyabrata Mohanty.

“We decided to continue with our agitation as three more erring policemen are still roaming scot free. Our members will hold a meeting on October 26 at 2pm to take a decision on our future course of action,” he said.

“When two persons – one civilian and another home guard — have been arrested, it is strange that the three other police personnel have not been arrested even when everything is clear from the video footage that had gone viral after the incident,” Mohanty rued.

In a related development, the high court on Wednesday posted the two PILs seeking judicial probe into the police-lawyer brawl to October 29 for hearing along with the report of the inspector general of crime branch.

The division bench of Chief Justice K.S. Jhaveri and Justice K.R. Mohapatra fixed the date after the crime branch sought more time to conclude the investigation.

Inspector general of crime branch Arun Kumar Bothra had started probe his probe on October 2. As part of the inquiry, the assaulted lawyer was examined along with recording of his statement on Thursday.

On September 27, the Supreme Court had restrained the Orissa High Court Bar Association from going on strike and directed it to resume the court work so that no impediment was caused in the right of access to justice of any litigant.

Taking note of the rift between the police and members of the bar, the bench had directed Bothra to probe into the matter.