Saturday, January 15 2005 17:58 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Port Blair: Hundreds of civil and criminal cases have piled up in the seven courts across Andaman and Nicobar islands as tsunami-struck litigants and lawyers fail to show up.

Sources at one of the courts in Port Blair revealed that after the tsunami, either the litigants had not been appearing on the due of hearing or the lawyers, who have been affected by the disaster, had failed to report to duty.

However, in most cases litigants from other islands devastated in the tsunami and earthquake were unable to appear on the due date of hearing due to the battered communication links.

A first class magistrate in one of the courts said that most courts had a backlog of hundreds of cases after being out of action for over 21 days.

''No one knows how long it will take for normalcy to be restored. It would be a mammoth task to clear up this huge backlog even when the courts eventually started functioning,'' he said on conditions of anonymity.

Sources in the local administration said about 20 per cent of the total of about 80 personnel working in the High Court, district and session courts were affected by the tsunami and could not attend office.

''Though the four courts in Port Blair are open and most of its staff is attending office, the one in Campbell Bay has been rendered non-functional with knee-deep water gushing in. ''The district courts in Car Nicobar and Mayabundar, however, can resume work if the administration clears the mess up and normal traffic is restored,'' the judicial magistrate said.

Sources at the Port Blair district and sessions court, however, maintained that all of their judicial personnel were attending office post-tsunami and cases of local litigants were being disposed of on their due dates.

However, those involving litigants from far off islands could not be heard. ''Unless the communication channels are fully operational and people's lives stabilised, they can not think of coming for a hearing,'' a court official said.