GUJRAT: The Federal Inves­tigation Agency (FIA) claimed to have unearthed a printing factory of fake travel documents on Saturday and arrested two human traffickers who had been running that business in Gujrat city.

A large number of fake Pakistani as well as other countries passports, visa stickers of the United States, European, Middle and Far Eastern countries, and stamps were recovered during the raid.

The raid was conducted by a team of FIA Gujrat circle, being led by Gujrat SHO Badar Basheer, at Shadman Colony that resulted in the arrest of suspects, Ziaur Rehman and Ejaz Ahmad.

FIA Gujranwala zone director Abdul Qadir Qamar told Dawn that the suspects were involved in tampering, making, forging and printing travel documents such as passports, resident cards, visa stickers, resident permits of different countries.

Factory making fake travel documents raided in Gujrat

The suspects, he said, would use tampered documents to smuggle migrants all over the world and extort heavy amount from them. They had been working in an organised manner with connivance of some other agents.

An FIA Gujrat circle official said that 20 Pakistani passports, 31 foreign passports, 91 fake stamps, 95 fake stamps for Pakistan immigration, three fake stamps for immigration of other countries, 11 bank deposit slips, at least 152 fake resident cards for different countries, four lamination sheets, one lamination machine, typewriter, four dyes of press, two ink bottles, seven driving licence, 23 fake cards of chamber of commerce cards, two foreign bank cards, one UK student card, 50 miscellaneous stamp dye frames, one print visa lamination sheet were seized during the raid.

Also, the officials recovered 12 fake blank visa stickers for the US, 96 fake blank visa stickers for Europe, 18 fake blank visa stickers for China, 41 fake blank visa stickers for the UK, seven fake blank visa stickers for the UAE, four fake blank visa stickers for Portugal, three fake blank visa stickers each for Greece and Malaysia, two fake blank visa stickers each for Poland, Cambodia, Spain, and one fake blank visa sticker each for Croatia, Germany, Malta, Sweden, Latvia, Serbia, Turkiye, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico, one stapler gun, four files and three mobile phones.

A case has been registered against the suspects under Sections 420, 468, 471, and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code, Section 6 of the Passport Act, 1974, and sections 17,18 and 22 of the Emigration Ordinance. Further investigation is in progress.

Wanted human trafficker held Meanwhile, FIA Gujranwala circle also arrested a wanted human trafficker from Narowal district on Saturday.

Suspect Mohammad Farooq Ashraf, son of Ashraf Magvi, is a resident of Eidgah Road in Narowal’s Mohallah Rasoolpura. He was wanted by FIA in a case registered last year in Karachi under sections 17/22 of Emigration Ordinance and Section 6 of Passport Act, 1974.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2024