KARACHI, July 17: The government has initiated action against the officials of the FIA reportedly involved in human smuggling.

Well-placed sources told Dawn on Thursday that the interior minister, Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hiyat, had taken a strong notice of the involvement of the FIA officials in the illegal business of human trafficking.

They said an assistant director in Lahore had already been suspended and a departmental action against him was in progress on the orders of the higher authorities. The suspended official was posted at the departure lounge of Lahore International Airport, they said.

The sources said the action against the assistant director was initiated for his alleged links with a suspected human smuggler who was arrested on June 25 and remained in the custody of FIA Lahore for 14 days.

They said the authorities were alerted as the FIA officials in Lahore failed to make any significant headway in to the investigation against suspect Malik Bashiruddin, whose one of the operators was arrested in the US for human smuggling.

The sources said the interior minister, who had chaired a meeting with top FIA officials on Wednesday in Islamabad, ordered the participants to gear up their action against those officials who have links with the human smuggling rackets.

The meeting was attended by the 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. Naeem.

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

The sources said action against as many as half a dozen FIA officials was in the pipeline as probe against them was under way.

The sources said the interior minister also ordered the establishment of the Passport Circle’s offices at Sukkur and Gujrat to contain the menace of human smuggling. The offices will be headed by an assistant director, they said.

Besides, they said, the interior minister also ordered the FIA to engage expert lawyers for an effective prosecution of the accused in human smuggling.

The sources said the minister expressed his dissatisfaction over the performance of the FIA in curbing the human smuggling.