LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Thursday offloaded five passengers at the Allama Iqbal International Airport who wanted to go to Timor-Leste (East Timor) and New Zealand via Malaysia.

The FIA, during the last one year, had offloaded thousands of passengers from flights to different countries for incomplete travel documents or for their intention to slip in other countries.

“An attempt to smuggle passengers to Timor-Leste and New Zealand via Malaysia was foiled on Thursday at Lahore airport,” a spokesperson for the FIA said.

He added that during the secondary inspection of a passenger, the FIA discovered evidence of an organised illegal migration plan.

“Based on digital evidence, four other passengers linked to the same network were identified. A facilitator based in Malaysia was operating the human smuggling network. Each passenger had allegedly paid Rs5m for the illegal migration arrangement. The passengers had been instructed to obtain further travel documents upon reaching Malaysia,” he said and added all five passengers were offloaded and handed over to the FIA Anti-Human Trafficking Circle for further legal proceedings.

COMPLAINT: A complainant in a human smuggling case alleged that an FIA investigator had threatened to implicate her in the same case.

The FIA anti-human trafficking cell Lahore had registered a case against Ghulam Murtaza, Nisar Adam and Ali Akbar for receiving Rs6.2m from complainant Nighat Shahzadi and her relatives on the promise of sending them to Saudi Arabia on domestic worker visas.

“The complainant was called to Saudi Arabia on an Umrah visa and was harassed there and forced to do illegal work. Thereafter, the complainant returned to Pakistan. During the inquiry, the accused were found guilty,” the FIR says.

Prime suspect Ghulam Murtaza has been arrested. Complainant Nighat Shahzadi said the investigating officer instead of cooperating with her was threatening to implicate her in this case. She said the suspect should be thoroughly investigated and the FIA make sure that looted money be returned to the victims.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2026