KARACHI, Feb 22: As many as 433 worn-out jobseekers deported from Muscat, were arrested on Thursday by the immigration staff of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) at the Karachi port.

According to the immigration authorities, the jobseekers, almost all of them illiterate, were smuggled to the Gulf state through Taftan crossing the Pakistan-Iran border illegally near Mand Ballu. They paid human traffickers different amounts ranging from Rs5,000 to Rs15,000.

Most of them were in bad shape as they remained in prison for several days before they were crammed into the cargo launch, Al-Mohammedi which had neither life boat nor life jackets. Except the emergency passports issued by the Pakistani mission in Oman, the deportees, most of whom were bare-footed, had no personal belongings or luggage.

According to the deportees, they traveled in the human traffickers' vehicles for two days to reach an Iranian border town. After an overnight stay, they again set out and reached another town in further two days. Afterwards, they were taken in other vehicles to a jetty where they were herded into small launches. After a 10-hour sail, they were abandoned in the coastal area near Muscat, where authorities rounded them up and sent them to jails.

Exhausted by hunger and thirst, the deportees were provided food, water, slippers and clothes by the Ansar Burney Trust (ABT).

Sarim Burney of the ABT, who was present at Ghas Bander to receive the deportees, said that human smuggling had been curbed to a remarkable extent and the number of deportees from Oman had decreased. He said over 13,000 jobseekers had been deported from Muscat in 2005, while the number had decreased to 8,000 in 2006.

He said the racket of human smuggling to Muscat from Mand Ballu, Balochistan, had been ruthlessly playing with the lives of innocent jobseekers for the past several years.

Only 11 deportees belonged to Karachi, while 111 hailed from Punjab, 112 from the NWFP, 181 from the interior parts of Sindh and 29 from Balochistan.

Immigration officials said the deportees belonging to Punjab and Balochistan would be given to the custody of the FIA in their respective provinces. They would be transported by buses, they added.

The officials, however, said the deportees hailing from the NWFP would be lodged at Landhi jail.