The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Gujrat Circle is going to start an inquiry into the cases of at least 40 victims of the human trafficking racket in Libya. While at least two more suspects involved in sending the men abroad, who later died in a boat tragedy at Greece’s expense, were arrested on Wednesday.
An FIA official told Dawn that the cases of at least 40 victims of the boat tragedy are yet to be filed as their relatives are reluctant to share the details of the agents and the travel history of their loved ones.
These heirs provided their DNA samples to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) team at a two-day camp at the local FIA office last month.
منڈی بہاءالدین اور ملک وال سے مزید 3 انسانی سمگلر گرفتار
He said the senior FIA authorities had ordered an inquiry into 40 such cases to ascertain the details of the victims through their air travel history, and to get information about the traffickers involved in sending them to Libya for onward boat journey to Italy.
The official said that in the light of the inquiry report, a case can be registered against the human traffickers involved in this scam.
Meanwhile, the local FIA circle claimed to have arrested two more agents on Wednesday, Afzal of village Amra Kalan near Dinga town and Hameed Ahmed of village Chorund in Mandi Bahauddin district. Cases were already registered against both the accused in the FIA police station.
With these arrests, the number of arrested accused has increased to 41. These accused were arrested from Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Wazirabad areas in a crackdown launched against agents involved in sending boat disaster victims abroad.
Moreover, at least five more cases have been registered against human traffickers at the local FIA police station, taking the total number of such cases to 130.
On the other hand, none of the 6 dead bodies from Gujrat district have reached their native areas so far. The bodies were identified by matching their DNA samples with those of their relatives. DNA samples of at least 120 people belonging to the affected families were collected at the FIA police station.
