Daily Times

KARACHI: A network of private agents and administrations of some renowned seminaries, with the connivance of officials of the Directorate Passport and Immigration’s Karachi and Lahore offices, has been sheltering illegal foreign students through fake visa extension stamps for many years.

It was revealed during the interrogation of four people arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency a few days ago.

Following the report, the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) have decided to a launch crackdown on illegal foreigners who have been living as students and staying in Pakistan for long, especially in various seminaries.

The FIA has identified one key suspect belonging to a famous seminary in Karachi who is indulged in providing foreign students with illegal visa extensions in collaboration with corrupt officials of the Directorate of Passport and Immigration through their agents.

According to sources in the FIA, the arrest of that main suspect – Mufti Naeem of Jamia Binoria – is expected in the coming days.

Recently, an important clue about a racket involved in providing shelter and fake visa extensions was disclosed to the FIA when four foreigners were trying to fly out of the country to their native places from the Karachi International Airport but they got arrested by the immigration officials on suspicion of fake visa extension stamps, and were sent to the FIA’s Anti-Human Trafficking Circle (AHTC) for further legal proceedings and interrogation. An FIR was also registered against them.

FIA officers started interrogation the arrested foreigners, identified as Dzholbaev Sanzjarbek from Kyrgyzstan, Zaw Win Tun from Myanmar, Ismaeel from Thailand and Lis Subhanl from Indonesia.

A source close to the investigation claimed that when the investigation was extended, the arrested accused disclosed that they arrived in Pakistan on short-visit visas and then got forged visa extensions prepared by officials in the passport office of Lahore.

It is pertinent to mention that a few months ago, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had directed FIA officials to take action against all officials of the passport and immigration offices who were involved in illegal activities. The directives came after a report prepared by the officials of the FIA’s AHTC Karachi was sent to him containing information about illegal activities being conducted by the staff of passport and immigration offices.

“It all started when a Chinese company sent a written complaint to the Interior Ministry and the FIA mentioning that some of the staff members were demanding money (bribe) for extending visas of its Chinese employees despite the fact that all the formalities and requirements were completed. The complainant said that the [illegal] practice was hurting the business of the company,” source claimed.

On March 23, an official of the Interior Ministry’s visa section was arrested from Islamabad and brought to Karachi by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on the charges of extending visas to foreigners in exchange for money.

According to the FIA, the suspect was arrested upon identification by another official namely Ramzan working in Karachi office. Sajid was accused of receiving bribes and extending visas using fake stamps, while Ramzan’s job was to collect money and distribute it among members of the ‘gang’.

“The Federal [Interior] Ministry directed the FIA to thoroughly probe into the matter… An enquiry was launched by the FIA’s Anti-corruption and Crime Circle (ACC), while the entire team of the Karachi Directorate of Passport and Immigration’s visa section was transferred to other cities,” a source said.

Giving updates, the source said that the four arrested foreign ‘students’, after the expiry of the validity of their visas, got them extended through a “qari sahib” instead of going back to their countries, who used to send their visas with Rs 20,000 each as ‘extension fee’ to Lahore and received the visas bearing new stamps of the passport and immigration office.

According to FIA sources, it had been established during the investigation that there were many more similar cases across the country. They said that nabbing the illegal immigrants had become the prime objective of the agency to eradicate the menace of terrorism.

Sources said that the evidence they had gathered was enough to uncover the illegal students and their facilitators, and to put them behind the bars.

When contacted, Jamia Binoria spokesperson Ghulam Rasool completely denied the institution’s involvement in the extension scam. He said that the administration used to pay the agent money for extension, and he used to take care of the procedure. “If the agent has been using unfair means for extension, the administration is not aware of it. The institution is not involved in any fraudulent activity.”