Peshawar – Law enforcement agencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have launched a concerted operation targeting individuals residing illegally in the province and those involved in obtaining fraudulent Pakistani identity documents. It is a joint operation by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Frontier Corps (FC), and provincial police spanning over several locations, including Afghan refugee camps.
The move is in line with a wider policy initiative to control and standardize documentation, especially in the wake of the recent mass expulsion policy on undocumented Afghan nationals.
FIA Busts Forgery Ring
The FIA Anti-Human Trafficking Circle of Peshawar Zone announced a great breakthrough in their process of breaking networks that deal with document fraud. A FIA raid in a private hotel in the Dabgari area of Peshawar led to the arrest of five Afghan citizens.
The suspects who were arrested were Ali Khan, Ajmal, Qasim, Ahmad, and Hamza. The FIA has claimed that all five of them are of Afghanistan nationality and they were unlawfully living in Pakistan after entering the country by illegal means.
In the process of the search, the officers found both the Afghan documents and the fake Pakistani identity cards belonging to the suspects.
Plot to Travel to Saudi Arabia
Preliminary investigations soon revealed the complex motive of the forgery. The apprehended suspects admitted that they were in the process of getting Pakistani identity cards and passports fraudulently.
The motive of this fraud was to take the forged Pakistani papers to gain a Saudi Arabian working visa. This signifies a network where the Pakistan documentation system is used to enable foreign jobs without going through the legal immigration procedures.
A spokesperson of the FIA said that a formal case is registered against them due to illegal residence and forgery. The official further stated that an investigation is going on and the police will likely make more arrests depending on the information given by the arrested, and it is possible that it has been done by a bigger organized crime group.
