of the state-owned steel mills upset Shaukat Aziz, who served as the prime minister under the Musharraf administration. What irked president Pervez Musharraf however was the controversial Missing Persons case that found Pakistan's intelligence agencies (including the FIA and the ISI) to be complicit in the forced disappearances of up to 400 people (including terror suspects and human rights activists) without due process since 2001. Under Chaudhry's leadership, the courts had increasingly started "exercising independence from the government" when it ordered the security agencies to produce the missing people in court. When the Musharraf administration asked the judge to quit, Chaudhry refused to go. On 9 March 2007, Musharraf had no other choice but to suspend Chaudhry from his post for alleged and unspecified charges of misconduct and misuse of authority. The sacking of the head of the judiciary sparked bloody protests throughout Pakistan and "edged the country towards a constitutional crisis". The civil unrest grew with regards to the validity of the allegations as well as doubts as to whether Musharraf had the power to suspend the chief justice. It was on these grounds that Chaudhry waged a legal battle in the Supreme Court seeking his reinstatement. He called his suspension a "thinly veiled assault on the independence of judiciary in Pakistan". Nationwide protests and media ban On 5 May 2007, in showing solidarity with the former chief justice, a motorcade of Chaudhry's supporters rode with him from Islamabad to Lahore where he was expected to speak at the Lahore High Court Bar Association when this motorcade of over 2,000 vehicles was stopped by the police with baton charges and tear gas shelling. Debates concerning the day's events started being covered and discussed on the Pakistani news media. The government wanted to limit the media coverage of Chaudhry's rallies and asked the Supreme Court to warn news networks that any "media coverage, discussion and analysis" that impeded legal procedures would be treated as contempt of court. The court issued a statement in which it said the news media, particularly Geo TV host Kamran Khan, had broadcast "sensational reporting aimed at scandalising and maligning the honourable judges of the Supreme Court". Khan defended his actions by saying he had no malicious intent. But when discussions of the Chaudhry's rallies persisted on television, the government decided to take drastic measures and abruptly pulled Geo TV and Aaj TV off air. It