GUJRAT: The immigration wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) offloaded seven passengers allegedly travelling to Europe via Saudi Arabia under the guise of Umrah pilgrims, at the Sialkot International Airport on Tuesday.

As per the FIA, fake visas and nationality cards of different countries were also recovered from these passengers, who were offloaded from different flights. Four of them intended to travel as a group from Saudi Arabia to Cyprus.

A senior FIA official told Dawn that during the passengers clearance process for Flight No PF 720, a group of four passengers belonging to Pasrur tehsil of Sialkot district – Ahsan Raza, Sayed Ameer Haider, Sayed Karam Abbas Kazmi and Syed Gohar Abbas – was detected. They apparently intended to go to Saudi Arabia on Umrah Visa.

During Immigration clearance, the counter officer referred these four passengers to the shift in charge for verification.

During their profiling, the official said, it transpired that they were actually intending to skip from Saudi Arabia and go to Cyprus.

He said that the WhatsApp chat of Karam Abbas showed that his relative Meesam Raza, also from Pasrur and currently living in Cyprus, had struck a deal with him and three others to send them to Cyprus after receiving Rs1.8 million from each of them. They had paid Meesam Rs1m each in advance. The proof of these bank transactions have also been found, the official added.

Similarly, he said, during the immigration clearance of Flight No FZ 338, a passenger, Rana Mateen, of Gujranwala, was traced, who apparently intended to visit Saudi Arabia on Umra visa.

He said that during his personal search, two Pakistani passports – issued in the names of Azhar and Imran – and Lativan visas were recovered from him. Both Pakistani passport and Latvian visas were found to be fake, he added.

The passenger disclosed that passports were handed over to him by an unknown person on the direction of his friend Awais, who is currently residing in Austria. He further disclosed that he was about to deliver the passports to Azhar and Imran.

The official said that Mateen also disclosed that his Umra visa and ticket was arranged by Awais, who promised that he would be paid Rs100,000 for delivering the passports and visas.

He said that investigations show that Azhar (real name Danish Khan) and Imran (real name Talat Ahmed), have already departed to Malaysia from the Allama International Airport, Lahore, on their genuine passports.

Meanwhile, two other passengers – Zahid of Asghar Town, Gujrat and Kamran Munsif were also offloaded from a Saudia-bound flight after the French visa of Zahid and Italian citizenship card of Kamran were found to be fake. Both were traveling as Umrah pilgrims.

The offloaded passengers were handed over to Anti-Human Trafficking Cell of the FIA for further action.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026