Heroin found on PIA flight to London

Passports of 14 crew members confiscated; probe underway

British authorities confirmed on Tuesday that heroin were recovered from a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight at Heathrow airport.

Passports of the crew members of the flight were also confiscated.

The National Crime Agency of Britain was investigating the matter relating to the recovery of narcotics from Islamabad to London flight PK-785 by the border security personnel, BBC Urdu reported.

No arrest had been made in the case while further investigation was underway, the report added.

Earlier, PIA spokesperson Mashhood Tajwar confirmed the flight, which arrived at 2:50pm in London, was thoroughly searched for over two hours after landing.



Upon landing, as passengers disembarked, the flight crew and aircraft were searched by authorities, the spokesperson said and added that 14 crew members were released after being detained for nearly two hours.

Tajwar claimed that nothing was found on the plane during investigation, saying they plan to take up the case with the authorities concerned.

Interestingly, narcotics was recovered from the same Boeing-777 plane earlier also during a repair work.

In February, a Heathrow-bound PIA aircraft was intercepted and escorted by fighter jets to Stansted Airport in northeast London because of a “vague security threat”. Later, a suspect was arrested and charged with fraud and misrepresentation by Met Police.

Khalid Baqa, the 52-year-old suspect was previously jailed for two years in 2012, after being charged with three counts of possession of terrorist material and one count of dissemination of terrorist material.