PESHAWAR, June 27: As the provincial government has given a free hand to police in its drive against "vulgarity" the latter is being execused of misusing the law and its authority in an indiscriminate manner in its campaign against cyber cafes here, local lawyers said on Sunday.

Police arrested dozens of people, 70 of them young boys, during the last couple of days without any proper charge, claiming that they were viewing pornographic internet sites and movies.

The police have also been violating the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, as most of the arrested boys were below 18, but were charged along with adults.

"There is absolutely no check on the police in its ongoing campaign against cyber cafes and they have made it a source of victimising innocent people," said an owner of an internet cafe arrested from Chamkani area.

He said that the government should forthwith frame rules for regulating the business of cyber cafes so that the activities of police could be checked.

A boy of 16, who was arrested from a cyber cafe, told Dawn in the premises of the district courts on Saturday, that he was simply sending a message to his friend when the police raided the cafe and arrested all the persons present inside.

The owner of a cybercafe arrested from Yakatoth area said that they were running the cyber cafe properly as they had not made separate cabins inside it.

He said that the monitor of all the computers were visible to other users.

There was no question of misusing these computers, he said adding that the police had raided his cafe thrice during last one month.

These days interesting scenes could be seen in the district courts as almost in front of each of the courtroom of judicial magistrates dozens of boys could be seen, either hand-cuffed or tied with ropes.

About 70 boys were produced on Saturday. Some of them were released on bail whereas remaining arrested persons were sent to prison.

A policeman of Chamkani police station, who was holding a rope through which about a dozen boys were tied in the district courts, said that although they did not know anything about the computer, but one thing was clear to them that it was a bad thing and these clubs were a source of vulgarity in the city.

When asked what he knew about internet, he said that it was a television through which pornographic movies were screened by the internet owners.

A lawyer dealing with these cases, Shah Faisal Khan, said that even the police were not clear about the law under which they should book these arrested persons.

He added that in some of the cases Section 294 of Pakistan Penal Code was mentioned, which only deal with doing objectionable things in public.