ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: The government has decided to award stringent punishment to human smugglers after shifting their cases from courts of judicial magistrates to session judges.

The decision was taken on a proposal of the Federal Investigation Agency, FIA deputy director Tariq Khosa told Dawn on Friday.

He said cases of human smuggling were earlier sent to judicial magistrates but due to piling up of cases in these courts it was decided to try the cases in session courts. Also, he said, cases in which women and children were forcibly sent abroad remained low priority in courts of judicial magistrates.

Mr Khosa said the Human Traffic Ordinance was being amended for the transfer of cases from lower to higher judiciary.

He said the federal cabinet had approved the transfer of cases from courts of judicial magistrates to session courts, and it now had to be approved by parliament.

The government recently issued a list of 65 most wanted human traffickers, mostly belonging to Gujrat, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin and Sialkot. Twenty-nine of them belong to Gujrat, 12 to Gujranwala, nine to Mandi Bahauddin and eight to Sialkot.

The FIA claims decline in human smuggling in the current year following busting of 26 international networks of human smugglers, and arrest of 1,006 people travelling on fake documents and a number of travel agents.

“We have busted 26 networks of human traffickers which have been operating between Pakistan and UK, Greece, Turkey, UAE and Iran,” Mr Khosa said.

He said human smuggling to Europe had declined by 54 per cent and to Middle East by 15 per cent. Some 300 human smugglers had been arrested in 2004. The number of arrested smugglers increased to 874 in 2006, while the number of deportees decreased, the FIA official said.