PESHAWAR, Oct 13: The situation arising after the US attack on Afghanistan has badly effected work in local courts for the last one week as in most of the cases police officials are on special duties and not available for the court-related work.

It is learnt that the dozens of prisoners arrested in petty offences are behind the bars as police officials are not available for bringing their record to the court.

Similarly, the police officials who are prosecution witnesses in most of the cases have not been appearing before the court due to their round the clock assignments.

As cops are not available for bringing prisoners for their routine appearance before the courts, therefore during the last six days prisoners have not been brought to the courts.

An official at the sessions courts said that as a large number of policemen including the reserved force have been deputed at almost all the important spots in the provincial capital for averting any ugly incident, therefore they could not be assigned any court-related responsibility.

He added that they had been facing problems because of this situation as in the absence of concerned police officials disposal of cases was impossible.

A local lawyer suggested that as the present situation would continue for some time, therefore, the judicial magistrates should be assigned responsibility of visiting central prison so that at least accused in minor offences could be released. He added that records of different cases had not been produced before the court, causing delay in disposal of cases.