100 most wanted traffickers still at large

12 suspects flee abroad to escape their arrest

LAHORE:

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) failed to arrest 100 most wanted human traffickers of Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and some other cites of the province.

These alleged human traffickers include two women, Nadia Tanveer and Zobia Rubab Malik among many others. Hundreds of human traffickers have been using modern technology to their benefits from different cities of Pakistan and abroad to run their network on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Hundreds of people have lost indeed and people are being deprived of millions of rupees along with their life savings. On the other hand, the FIA has been planning to arrest these traffickers for more than a year and a half, but not a single human trafficker has been arrested. The FIA's Red Book showed that 12 of the most wanted human traffickers have fled abroad to escape their arrest.

The highest number of human traffickers is 19 in Rawalpindi, followed by Gujranwala with 16 and Lahore is in the third position with 14. FIA's Red Book further revealed that there are 14 most wanted human traffickers in Lahore. Four of them have fled abroad. Five including Nasir Ali Afzal Siddiqui of Faisalabad and sixteen including Zafar Iqbal Muzaffar Hussain of Gujranwala and seven others have also fled abroad.

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Nearly five, including Mumtaz Yusuf of Multan, nine including Raja Farhan Imran of Islamabad, nineteen including Aqeel Bilal from Rawalpindi and eleven including Sheikh Abdullah and Sheikh Nadeem are from Karachi. Raja Sultan and Shaukat Cheema are from Quetta.

However, there are no human traffickers from Peshawar. According to FIA sources, most of the wanted human traffickers fleeced people on the pretext providing them the nationality of Canada, Britain and other countries. Some of the victims lost their savings on the pretext of obtaining higher education from abroad.

These human traffickers received dollars and pounds after completion of 50% of the visa process. Asim Malik and his wife Zobia, who were included in the Red Book, fleeced people who were interested in studying abroad and obtain citizenship. Reportedly, more than 50 cases were registered against them in the FIA.

But they were not arrested despite having an office on Lahore's main highway and then the couple fled abroad easily. When Punjab Zone One FIA Director Dr Rizwan was contacted in this regard, he refused to give his version on the issue.