KARACHI, July 15: The arrest of a suspected human smuggler, in late June, has alerted the federal authorities as the interior minister has summoned a meeting with the top officials of the Federal Investigation Agency in Islamabad on Wednesday.

Sources told Dawn on late Monday night that the meeting was called to assess the FIA performance in the investigation of the human smuggling racket, following the arrest of Malik Bashiruddin in Lahore on June 25.

They said the authorities were giving extraordinary attention to the outcome of the examination of the suspect, who was given in the custody of the agency’s Passport Circle in Karachi on July 9.

The sources said the deputy director of the FIA’s Passport Circle in Lahore, where Malik Bashiruddin was operating his Dream Land Travel agency, had already been transferred, as no relevant record could have been seized there. “The investigators could not seize any significant record from the travel agency, though its owner remained in their custody for a couple of weeks”, they said.

The sources said that besides the secretary of the Interior division, director general of the FIA, Mohib Asad, director Karachi Zone, S S Babar Khattak, director Rawalpindi, Nazar Abbas, and the three chiefs of the Passport Circles in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi — Mohammed Malik, Chaudhry Tanveer and Dr Naeeem — would attend the meeting.

The suspected human smuggler, whose one of the alleged operators, Javed Hamdani, has been arrested in the United States, was brought to Karachi on July 9 by the officials of the Passport Circle.

He was remanded to the FIA custody by a judicial magistrate, initially for four days, for interrogation and investigation in a case, registered by the Passport Circle in 2002.

The FIA sought extension in the remand of the suspect from the court, which allowed the official request and extended the remand till June 19.

Meanwhile, the sources said a joint interrogation team would also be constituted to grill the alleged human smuggler, who had been in the illegal business for over two decades.

Meanwhile, the sources said the suspect, who was an absconding accused in over a dozen cases of human smuggling in Karachi alone, was also booked in many similar cases by the Passport Circle, Rawalpindi. “The process of shifting him to Rawalpini has already started”, they said.