KARACHI, Sept 24: As many as 96 job seekers were offloaded from a Kyrgyzstan-bound flight late on Thursday night and detained at Karachi airport after they were found possessing forged documents.

FIA officials said an international gang was involved in the trafficking of job seekers on forged papers. The human traffickers have been identified andefforts were on to track them down across the country, they said.

They said an immigration officer of the FIA at the departure lounge spotted the unusual number of young men among the passengers of the Bishkik-bound special flight (No KGA-516) of the Kyrgyzstan Airlines.

They said some of the passengers told the immigration staff that they had paid a huge amount to different agents, who had promised them jobs in the former Russian state and other European countries.

The officials said all the intending illegal immigrants were carrying a one-month visit visa, issued by the honorary consulate general of Kyrgyzstan. They all hailed from different parts of Punjab, including Gujrat, Gujranwala and Sargodha, they said.

FIA's assistant director, departure, Khaliq uz Zaman, told Dawn that the offloaded passengers included 31 men and three women. He said the job seekers had paid Rs500,000 to Rs800,000 to the agents for getting into European countries. All of them are still being interrogated and no case against them has so far been registered, the FIA official said.