PESHAWAR, Jan 24: The Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the Federal Investigation Agency has detected a case of tampering with the Personal Identification and Secured Compression Evaluation System (Pisces) introduced to monitor passengers’ traffic at the country’s entry points and curb human smuggling and terrorism. Pisces was installed at all international airports and Torkham, Chaman and Taftan borders with Afghanistan and Iran by the United States.

The SIU was investigating into the case of an Afghan national, Alizada Sulaiman, arrested by immigration staff at Dubai airport on Dec 6, when he landed there from Peshawar and was trying to board a connecting Emirates Airline flight to Heathrow.

The Afghan national was interrogated by United Arab Emirates immigration staff and an air liaison officer of the British High Commission in Islamabad, Simon Grove, and later deported to Peshawar on Dec 13.

The data saved in Pisces at Peshawar airport showed that he had gone to Dubai on an Afghan passport, sources told Dawn on Monday. But the data about Mr Sulaiman copied by Pisces head office in Islamabad from the system in Peshawar showed that he had boarded the plane on a ‘fake’ British passport, the sources maintained.

The entries showed that someone has either tampered with the system or copied the record incorrectly.

“It is very important to know how the system registered two different data about one person,” said an SIU official.

Official in charge of the unit, Omar Hayat Gondal, said he had sent the case to the Pisces head office to ascertain who had assisted the Afghan national in travelling with fake documents.

The SIU transferred the case from the Peshawar passport circle, which had conducted initial inquiry, and suspended Immigration Inspector Tahir Jan Durrani on charges of assisting the suspect.

But Mr Gondal said someone from the Pisces department must have tampered with the system. The Pisces head office had launched an inquiry into the case and its findings were expected in a couple of days, he said.

Sources said three officials at Peshawar airport were responsible for entering passengers’ data, which was copied in the head office in Islamabad, but several FIA immigration staff had the data entry password and they assisted the Pisces officials in their work. However, the FIA officials had no access to the main database, they said.

The record at Peshawar airport shows that the official concerned entered the data of Mr Sulaiman at 6am on Dec 6 but he got his boarding card at 7:30am after a considerably long time.

A Pisces official, when contacted, refused to comment on the issue.