Human traffickers face FIA crackdown in Punjab

Federal agency arrests four suspects, seizes 124 passports

LAHORE:

The FIA Passport Cell has stepped up operations against human traffickers and travel agents involved in the business of fake visa on the pretext of arranging jobs and consultation across Punjab.

The federal agency’s passport cell raided a plaza in Gulberg area, arrested four suspects and seized 124 passports, files, two laptops and five computers from them.

 According to officials, the traffickers lure overseas job seekers, extort millions of rupees from them and send them illegally to Europe via Turkey and Greece through the Iranian border.

 Many people are trapped in the snowbound mountains of Greece and several have reportedly died in recent years.

 Human traffickers have set up their business in Bangkok and Malaysia to make fake passports of Pakistanis on which they are shown as citizens of Bangkok and for this millions of rupees are charged.

According to the sources, the FIA Passport Cell is conducting operations against those involved in human trafficking in Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujrat and Hafizabad.

Read More: Rising human trafficking

 Sources say that human traffickers have set up networks that usually invite people who want to go abroad on visit visas. They have monthlong visa and in the meantime the human smugglers make their fake passports on the basis of which they are illegally sent to Malta in Europe by boats. Some are sent to Johannesburg in South Africa.

 However, some people are caught for having bogus documents and are sentenced to many years in the countries under their immigration laws.

 Sources said that the Passport Cell has also decided to take action under the Immigration Act against the travel agents who tricked people into getting jobs abroad on bogus documents.

 The FIA Passport Cell has received information from sources that some human trafficking travel agents are smuggling people on the basis of bogus documents.

 Human traffickers are playing with lives by tricking people into sending them to Europe via Iran's land route. Relatives of some people who have gone abroad from Lahore and nearby villages said they had paid millions of rupees to human smugglers.

The human traffickers try to send them illegally through bogus documents to Iran. The Passport Cell recently launched action against a travel agency on the identification of a passenger deported over a fake Turkish visa.

 The cell arrested four suspects including Asim, Riaz, Muhammad Waseem, Waqas Siddique and Hassan Shahbaz.

 A case has been registered against the suspects under The Emigration Ordinance, 1979 and further investigations are under way.

 In this regard, FIA officials say that the purpose of cracking down on human traffickers to save more innocent people from being trapped by them.

However, those who want to go abroad should use the legal method instead of using illegal means so that their lives can be saved and their families do not face any trouble.