PESHAWAR, Aug 29: The Federal Investigation Agency’s immigration cell has requested the Afghan consulate in Peshawar to urge the authorities in Afghanistan to arrest the alleged ringleader of an international gang of human smugglers operating from Kabul.

The FIA has also asked its Karachi office to arrest a hotel-owner who is allegedly involved in the same business of sending abroad Afghan nationals on forged documents. It identified the hotel owner as Abdul Qayyum, a brother of the chieftain of the human trafficking ring, Habibullah.

The Anti Trafficking Unit (ATU) said it had widened the scope of the interrogation by arresting Nadir, another Afghan national, in the Andar Shahr locality of the walled city on Sunday night.

However, officials at the FIA office here said that Nadir had not been formally arrested. “We are trying to get information about the gang involved in sending Afghan nationals, particularly children, to Saudi Arabia on fake documents,” said ATU interrogator Inspector Shaukat Khan.

Another FIA official said a lot of information had been collected about the operations of the gang following the interrogation of four persons including the three accused — Khairullah, Baryalay and Rehmatullah.

“The gang is involved in sending children to the Red Sea port city of Jeddah and using them for beggary and pickpocketing during the holy month of Ramazan,” said Inspector Qazi Hamid.

“We were deported by the Saudi police two years ago along with 25 other Afghan children,” said Abdur Rasool, 15, and Abdul Wakil,12, both residents of Puli Khumri in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan.

The two teenagers said they used to sell handkerchiefs and chewing gum in the streets of Jeddah, along with other Afghan children.

But the FIA interrogators said that most of these Afghan children were involved in the begging racket.

They said that although they had been deported several times, they had still tried to go to Saudi Arabia under different names.

The Afghan children told this correspondent that they were staying with Abdul Qayyum at his hotel in Al-Asif Square in Sohrab Goth area of Karachi.

They came a few days ago to Peshawar along with Nadir from Karachi and were waiting for the green light so that they could proceed to Saudi Arabia, they added.

The children said that their parents had not yet paid any money to Abdul Qayyum or Habibullah, but they had promised to pay them through a middleman in Karachi when they reached Saudi Arabia.

The FIA has requested officials at Askari Commercial Bank and Prime Commercial Bank to freeze the account of Habibullah.

It has also sought help from the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) as five original computerised national identity cards had been recovered from the flat of the ringleader during a raid on Saturday night.

“Some Nadra officials issued the ID cards to Habibullah and his family and we will certainly interrogate them,” said a senior FIA official.