ISLAMABAD, April 17: A number of foreign embassies and diplomatic missions have asked the Pakistani authorities to provide serial numbers of over 20,000 Pakistani passport books stolen from various passport offices during the last five years, diplomatic sources told Dawn.

Diplomats fear that terrorists coming in from Afghanistan and hiding in Pakistan, particularly those related to Al Qaeda network, might be trying to use these blank passport books to travel out of Pakistan to western capitals for terrorist activities following the joint hunt by Pakistani and US authorities here.

A diplomat said that under diplomatic norms, states could exchange specific information relating to theft of travel documents on request. Most of the passport book theft cases were reported from regional passport offices bordering Afghanistan like Quetta and Peshawar, besides Abbottabad, Multan and Gujranwala.

Additional secretary interior, Abdul Rashid Khan, said that he could not confirm whether or not the government had officially received any specific enquiry, but it was quite possible that terrorists might try to travel on these documents.

As many as 10,506 blank copies of Pakistani passports were carried away by unknown persons since April 2000 from various passport offices in the country. Of these, 5,489 passports were stolen between March 17 and June 18, 2000.

Another 5,117 passports were stolen between June and December 2001. Diplomatic sources said that they were more concerned with the theft of 2,000 passports from Postal Authority Peshawar on December 30, 2001 after US attacks on Afghanistan.

Passport Nos KA-088001 to KA-090000 went missing on December 30, 2001 from Peshawar. Before this, 1,000 copies starting from serial No. K627001 to K628000 were stolen in transit to regional passport office Gujranwala.

Two lots of 2,000 passports from K291001 to K293000 and 117 copies from K250884 to K251000 were carried away from regional passport office Multan on June 17, 2001.

Rashid Khan confirmed that passports were stolen in December 2001 from railway godowns and postal authority in Peshawar. He said that as a standard operating drill, the government circulates lists of missing passports to the foreign office, Pakistani mission abroad and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The FIA later reports these lists to the Interpol, he added.

He said that Pakistani police had detected two cases, one each in Lahore and Islamabad, in the recent days through a highly sophisticated computer software developed by the Intelligence Bureau indigenously.

He did not agree that any foreign country had so far reported any case in which they have used these missing passports or the two passports recovered in Lahore and Islamabad were detected through United States software.

He said: “IB’s own software is very effective and user-friendly and could meet our requirements”. Once the airport or the FIA authorities feed serial number of a passport in their computer, the software having full record of stolen documents would start blinking and verify its authenticity.

On April 22, 2000, about 2,206 passports (serial nos H479912 to H480000, H642001 to H644000 and LA001764 to LA001880) went missing from passport office, Quetta, 1,121 passports (H517880 to H519000) from passport office Sialkot, on March 17, 2000 besides 2,160 passports (H743841 to H744000, H799001 to H800000 and H846001 to H847000) from regional passport office Abbottabad on April 22, 2000.