The police on Wednesday loaded a visitor into the prisoner van at the central prisons and took him to court only to discover the mistake on arrival during the headcount.

Sources told Reporter that the civilian had protested being ushered into the van, however his pleas went unheard in the commotion as they were already late leaving.

On realising their mistake, the police officers put the visitor once again into the prisoner van and drove him back to the central prisons where they dropped him off.

Reporter pointed out that this was the second gaffe in less than 24 hours, the previous one being the arrest of a man suspected of being an associate of the killers of Stavros Demosthenous, while in actual fact he had been a builder that happened to be driving along the same road as the perpetrators.