PESHAWAR, June 24: Eighteen Pakistanis have been deported from the United Arab Emirates on charges of travelling on forged documents, sources said on Friday. They said 12 Pakistanis were deported to Peshawar on Wednesday and six on Thursday night.

Twelve more who had travelled on fake documents might reach the city on Friday night or Saturday, the sources said, adding that the FIA (passport circle) had initiated an inquiry.

The sources said that the 30 Pakistanis had travelled to Dubai by PIA on work visa on June 20 and 21. But the UAE immigration authorities detained them as they had not received their visa documents.

An FIA official said that usually agents got documents from the UAE’s department concerned which faxed the visa to job-seekers and sent the original documents to the immigration authorities at Dubai Airport.

However, he said, the UAE authorities did not send the documents to the Dubai immigration authorities and the Pakistanis who had travelled on these documents faced deportation.

The sources said that three overseas promoters had prepared the documents of the eported persons and the FIA was interrogating one of them.

The deported Pakistanis had been grilled at the Bureau of Immigration and Overseas Employment in Rawalpindi. However, they were issued the national identity card of immigrants Pakistanis from the Nadra office in Swat.

The sources said that three overseas promoters were involved in preparing their documents after getting Rs180,000 to Rs190,000 from each of them.

One of them hails from Swat and another from Azakhel of the Nowshera district. Azim Khan, who had his office in Azakhel, was interrogated by the FIA on Friday, the sources said.

“This a routine matter and they travelled on genuine travel documents. But they were deported as the UAE immigration authorities at Dubai had not received their original documents from the department concerned,” said PIA’s station manager Saeed Khan.