PESHAWAR, May 4: The city police have launched a ‘combing operation’ against the Afghan refugees living here without their families or any legal occupation, sources told Dawn on Sunday.

Capital City Police chief DIG Tanveerul Haq Sipra issued directives late on Saturday night to all police stations to arrest the refugees illegally living in and on the outskirts of Peshawar. They would be arrested under the Foreign Act, the sources said.

The city police had several times requested the government to confine the movement of the Afghans refugees to their camps as without this measure the law and order could not be maintained, they said.

A source told this reporter that some two-and-a-half month ago, the secret agencies had asked all public call offices at the refugee camps to shut down their business as the agencies suspected links of the Afghans hailing from the northern parts of their homeland with the Indian mission in Afghanistan.

“They are certainly providing information about Pakistan to the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which has established a strong network there after the fall of Taliban regime,” he claimed.

The Afghan DPs working against Pakistan’s interest would be netted during the operation, the source said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah in their recent visit to Islamabad presented a list of Taliban suspects to the Pakistan government, who, they claim, are active here to re-group the militia.

But, the police chief clarified, the operation against the Afghan refugees was not launched on the demand of the Afghan government.

“The purpose of this operation is to check the increasing crimes as the Afghans are involved directly or indirectly in over 75 per cent of such acts committed in the city,” said DIG Tanveerul Haq Sipra.

In most of the cases, police faced difficulty in arresting them because they kept shifting places after committing crimes, he added.

“We want to arrest all those Afghan refugees who are without valid documents or living in a locality without families and any legal occupations,” Mr Sipra said.

Police teams would interrogate all the refugees and those who failed to satisfy the law enforcers about their valid purpose of stay in the country would be arrested under the Foreign Act, Mr Sipra maintained.

The police teams would also visit refugee camps and other city areas to investigate the Afghans thoroughly, he added.—Bureau