GUJRAT: The immigration authorities of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Friday offloaded four passengers from flights to Indonesia and Turkiye.

An FIA official told Dawn that the passengers belonging to Sialkot and Gujranwala had been in contact with the human traffickers who had to send them to Italy through illegal means.

He added that the passengers, Muhammad Asad and Nadeem, had been traveling to Indonesia on flight number FZ 338. During the immigration clearance, their documents were scrutinised and it was found by the FIA officials that they had been in contact with a Karachi-based agent and they had struck a deal for Rs2m each for sending them to Libya and then smuggle them to Italy through illegal means. The immigration officials offloaded both these passengers.

Similarly, the passenger, namely Sufyan Arshad, was traveling on flight number FZ 338 on Turkiye’s work visa but during the scrutiny, the visa was found fake which the passenger had got from an agent for Rs1.6m.

Another passenger, namely Qaiser Farooq, was going on a visit visa of Turkiye on flight number FZ316 but his documents were found that he had earlier travelled to Iran in 2023 but there was no record found of his return to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the FIA Gujranwala Zone organized an awareness session on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling at the University of Gujrat (UoG) for the students of the law department.

Muhammad Riaz Khan, deputy director immigration, Sialkot Airport, was the guest speaker.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2025