PESHAWAR, May 27: Police have seized 147 blank Pakistani passports from a printing press in Mohalla Jhangi in the walled city and arrested a man and his son in connection with the case, a senior police official said here on Thursday. Senior Superintendent of Police (operations) Saeed Khan Wazir disclosed at a press conference that the arrested men had links with anti-state elements and had planned to hand over the blank passports to those elements.

The suspects confessed during the preliminary interrogation that they had links with many travel agents of the NWFP and Punjab, Mr Wazir said. Some passport officials were also involved and they provided the accused with Pakistani passports, he said. But the SSP pointed out that the passport officials would be rounded up only after the police investigation was completed.

The arrests were made following a tip-off about the visit of a travel agent from Punjab. He was supposed to pick up the passports from Mohammad Ashraf, owner of the printing press in Mohalla Jhangi. The police raided the press and seized a briefcase containing the 147 passports.

Police identified the arrested men as Mohammad Ashraf and his son as Ashfaq Ahmad, residents of Landi Arbab locality.

“It is difficult to say where these passports were taken from. But we have sent the serial numbers of these blank Pakistani passports to the department concerned and after verification action will be taken against the passport officials involved in this illegal activity,” he said.

“Since the introduction of machine-readable passports in Pakistan, anti-state elements have been paying a high price for blank Pakistani passports as these are valid up to the year 2007,” he added.