A FORMER solicitor who was struck off for professional misconduct has had the appeal to have her bankruptcy order lifted, adjourned.

Bushra Anwar appeared before the High Court in Leeds before Christmas. No date has been fixed for the next hearing.

Miss Anwar appeared at Blackburn County Court in August with an application to annul a bankruptcy order made by the court in October last year.

The all-day hearing was adjourned and transferred to the High Court in Leeds.

Before her hearing in Blackburn, leaflets were circulated throughout Blackburn town centre, inviting people to join a 'peaceful demonstration' outside the court.

The leaflet called for 'justice regardless of race, culture, creed or association'.

On the day more than a dozen supporters held aloft home-made banners and collected signatures for a petition.

Police had been alerted by court staff, but the protest passed off without incident.

Miss Anwar lost her practising certificate as a lawyer in May, 1999, after admitting a series of breaches of professional misconduct.

These included being fined in the High Court for contempt of court, employing a 'struck off' solicitor in her firm, making a false statement to her bank and internal accounting irregularities.

Only a week before being struck off the official list of solicitors, Miss Anwar was named as a runner-up in the 1999 North West Woman of Achievement Awards.