GUJRAT: The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Gujrat circle is going to launch an inquiry into the cases of at least 40 victims of a human trafficking racket based in Libya, while at least two more suspects involved in sending people abroad, who later died in boat tragedy off Greece cost, were arrested on Wednesday.

An FIA official told Dawn that the cases of at least 40 victims of the boat tragedy were yet to be lodged because their heirs were reluctant to share the details of agents and travel history of their loved ones.

These heirs had provided their DNA samples to a team of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) at a two-day camp in the local FIA office last month.

He said the senior FIA authorities had ordered an inquiry into 40 such cases to ascertain the details of the victims through their air travel history, and to get information about the traffickers involved in sending them to Libya for onward boat journey to Italy.

The official said a case might be lodged against the human traffickers involved in the scam in light of the inquiry report.

Meanwhile, the local FIA circle on Wednesday claimed to have arrested two more agents, Afzal of Amra Kalan village near Dinga town and Hameed Ahmed of Chorand village of Mandi Bahauddin district.

Cases had already been lodged against the both suspects at the FIA police station here.

With these arrests, the number of arrested suspects has reached 41. These suspects were arrested from Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Wazirabad areas in the crackdown launched on the agents involved in sending boat tragedy victims abroad.

Moreover, at least five more cases have been lodged with local FIA police station against the human traffickers, taking the number of such cases to 130.

On the other hand, none of the six dead bodies identified as of the victims from Gujrat district, have so far arrived in their native areas. The bodies were identified through matching their DNA samples with their kin’s.

The DNA samples of at least 120 people belonging to the families of the victims had been collected at the FIA police station.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2023