The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Karachi on Tuesday busted a network involved in making Pakistani passports of Afghan nationals on forged documents.
The FIA’s Counter-Terrorism Wing (CTW) raided a passport office at Shahrah-e Faisal and recovered fake documents, which were to be used for making passports of over 70 Afghan nationals.
The Agency arrested assistant director of the passport office Farooq Sial.
Sources told the 24News TV channel that the foreigners reportedly belonged to Afghanistan.
They added that further investigation was underway.
It merits mention here that the government has tightened the screws on Afghans living in Pakistan particularly they were found involved in incidents of May 9 violence.
Millions of Afghans living in the country illegally have been sent back to their homeland.
Similarly, the law-enforcement agencies are also cracking down on the Afghans travelling on Pakistani passports.
Two weeks ago, the FIA had arrested 14 Afghan nationals from Peshawar for allegedly trying to acquire Pakistani citizenship through fake documents.
During the operation, FIA officials conducted a raid at a hostel in Tajabad locality and uncovered an organized international network operating across Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Investigations revealed that suspects had paid approximately Rs 2.5million to Rs 2.8 million each to agents for securing counterfeit identity cards, which they intended to use to travel to Saudi Arabia.
In addition to fake identity cards, officials recovered counterfeit Pakistani passports from the suspects as well.
The Agency is now conducting a thorough investigation into full scope of network, which includes examining potential complicity of officials within NADRA and various passport offices.
A similar gang was also busted by the Capital City Police Peshawar when they arrested seven persons allegedly making Pakistani National Identity Cards for Afghan nationals.
