PESHAWAR, Feb 23: Two employees of the Federal Investigation Agency have been arrested on charges of human trafficking, sources told Dawn on Thursday. Constables Saadat Afridi and Mir Samad were arrested on Wednesday by a team of the Special Investigation Unit investigating a case of human trafficking and taken to Islamabad, they said.

The unit is investigating into the case of Afghan national Alizada Sulaiman, arrested by authorities in Dubai on his arrival from Peshawar on Dec 6 last year. He was trying to board a flight to England on a bogus British passport.

An official of the British High Commission in Islamabad interrogated the accused in Dubai and sent a letter to the FIA headquarters demanding stern action against those involved in the case.

The Personal Identification and Secured Compression Evaluation System (Pisces) at Peshawar airport shows that Mr Sulaiman had presented his Afghan passport in Peshawar but in Dubai he tried to travel onward on a fake British passport. But the data copied by the Pisces head office in Islamabad showed that he had travelled on a fake British passport, the sources said.

The SIU had after initial investigation suspended Immigration Inspector Tahir Jan Durrani and asked the Pisces head office to identify who had tampered with the data. The sources said the head office had not replied to the latter in two months.