Daily Times

The Lahore High Court on Friday summoned a senior official of Monitoring and Evaluation Office of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in person and sought a reply from the director general of immigration and passport in a petition filed by a Pakistani immigrant in Italy for placing his name in the blacklist instead of a proclaimed offender who had the same name.

Justice Shujat Ali Khan passed the order on the petition filed by Muhammad Aslam, presently residing in Italy, through his counsel Ch Shoaib Saleem advocate. The lawyer argued before the court that the petitioner applied online for renewal of his passport after it expired in March 2017 but despite passage of more than one and a half years he could not get his passport renewed. The petitioner added that he repeatedly visited the passport and immigration office in Islamabad but to no avail. As a last resort, he hired some agent to get the status of his application for renewal of passport, who brought him a letter that was written to the FIA Lahore office for a second time by the office of immigration and passport Islamabad. Through this letter, the petitioner came to know that he has been blacklisted on the basis of information emailed by the FIA Lahore office to the DG immigration and passport. The counsel further argued that to the utter surprise of his client, the FIA provided information of a proclaimed offender who happened to carry same name as that of the petitioner, Muhammad Aslam, and mentioned petitioner’s parentage and CNIC number instead of the actual accused.

LHC summons FIA senior official along with complete record

The petitioner added that he was blacklisted at the behest of the actual accused – a PO and a resident of the same village in Gujrat – by the FIA officials just to extort money from him.

The lawyer pleaded that the petitioner was contributing to the state of Pakistan in form foreign remittances for the last more than five years but he was being humiliated back at home by the law enforcement agencies. Presently, he added, his status in Italy is that of an illegal immigrant and he had every apprehension that he might be arrested by the Italian police anytime, which may cause him colossal damage. Feeling convinced, Justice Shujat Ali Khan summoned senior official of the FIA along with complete record and sought reply from the authorities concerned. The case was adjourned for July10.