SAHIWAL: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Faisalabad region, arrested two persons at Nagina Chowk, Pakpattan, for smuggling unauthorised smartphones from abroad.

Ahmed Abduallah Khalid and Muhammad Umer, proprietors of MS Amin Mobiles and Babu Mobiles, respectively, were involved in smuggling mobile phones, utilizing their own digital currency converter accounts via forged and unauthorized forex trading and applications such as Binance, Bitgat and OKX.

According to the report, the suspects laundered unauthorised funds into PKR through complex transactions involving unrelated parties and different local banks.

The FIA team recovered cash, mobile phones, various bank account numbers used for transactions, and receipts of Hundi/Hawala transactions from different dates.

The accused have been booked under sections of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) of 1947 (Amended in 2020), and the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) on complaint of Faisalabad FIA SI Ajmal Hussain.

The raid was conducted under supervision of Assistant Director Muzamil Hussain. During the raid, the suspects failed to produce import documents for the smartphones being sold at various mobile shops in Nagina Chowk.

The FIA team also discovered illegal applications on WhatsApp numbers, deposit slips from different private banks, and more than six bank accounts used for laundering money through Hundi/Hawala. The suspects did illegal transactions at different local banks through complex systems by placing funds into unrelated parties accounts.

Additionally, the FIA identified Taskin Hussain, son of Muhammad Aslam and resident of Pine Valley, Pakpattan, as the provider of fake import documents for phones from Dubai. The investigation revealed that the suspects were in contact with traders both in Dubai and Pakpattan through WhatsApp.

SEXUAL ASSAULT: Sahiwal Police arrested a grocery store owner who tried to sexually abuse a 10-year-old girl at Chak 151/EB, tehsil Arifwala.

The girl told the police that she went to grocery shop to buy crackers where the shop owner called her inside, grabbed her and sexually assaulted her in an attempt to rape her. Some villagers got alerted and the suspect ran away from the shop.

District Police Officer Javed Chaddhar took notice of the incident and ordered arrest of the suspect. Later, the police arrested the suspect from the nearby village.

Police booked the suspect on the complaint of the girl’s father.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2025