GUJRANWALA, Sept 30: The Federal Investigation Agency’s passport circle claimed on Friday to have arrested 10 proclaimed offenders involved in a fraud of Rs4 million and recovered dozens of passports and other documents from their possession.

At a briefing here on Friday, deputy director Shahid Husain said the accused identified as Amir Shahzad, Abdul Razzaq, Babu Mohammad Afzal, Manzoor Ahmad, Imran, Zafar Iqbal, Syed Iqrar Husain Shah, Aner Mahmood Iqbal, Liaqat Ali and Amir Rashid received Rs4 million from dozens of residents of Gujrat, Sialkot, Narowal, Gujranwala, Hafizabad and Mandi Bahauddin for sending them abroad.

But neither they sent them abroad nor returned their money, instead they disappeared following the registration of a case against them.

They were declared proclaimed offenders by the agency and the court.

Our Lahore reporter adds the FIA arrested some human smugglers, who were later declared proclaimed offenders.

Officials told Dawn that the FIA director-general had given a target to each inspector of every passport circle of the country to arrest at least 15 POs under his region.

A four-member team headed by Inspector Gul Snober arrested 17 POs who were wanted in a number of human smuggling cases registered against them at the Lahore FIA passport circle police station.

Some of them were wanted in the cases registered at the FIA against them in two decades ago. Most of them belong to Lahore and Gujrat.

The DG announced a cash Rs100,000 and certificates to the raiding team.