The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) Friday claimed to have unearthed two organized drug trafficking gangs operating through Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) during the last three months and also made several arrests. ANF Director General (DG) Major General Musarat while addressing a news conference said that ANF has unearthed four major cases of drug trafficking in PIA planes in the last three months.
The cases discovered by ANF include; over 15-kg heroin was found hidden in PIA Boeing 777 at Karachi on April 3, 2017, 11-kg heroin was recovered reportedly at Heathrow Airport on May 15, 2017, 14.7-kg of heroin was recovered from another Boeing 777 at Benazir Bhutto Airport on May 22, 2017, and fourth incident occurred on May 31, 2017 whereby 2.4-kg heroin was found in another Boeing 777 aircraft at Karachi Airport. He said that the ANF team has made eight arrests in Karachi, two in Rawalpindi and one in Lahore.
Musarat said that he took notice of the incident of Heathrow airport and directed field staff as well as intelligence setup to focus their efforts towards thorough scanning and sterilization of all major airports, besides ensuring scanning of all foreign bound PIA flights. He said that during investigation different airport departments/ stakeholders were approached which included PIA, CAA, ASF and other airport service providers. More than 100 staff members of various organizations were interviewed or interrogated and thorough scanning of all available data was evaluated, he said.
The DG ANF said that the ANF team conducted raids at Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi to get hold on entire ring. As a result of serious efforts, the ANF unearthed at least two major drug trafficking rings which were mostly Karachi- based. He said that ANF team arrested Akbar alias Badshash in Karachi, an ex-PIA baggage employee and a high ranking person in drug trafficking organization who has been arrested on Friday at 0300 hours. He acted as chief co-ordinator and his responsibilities included recruitment of individuals at Karachi Airport, handing over drug packages and disbursement of facilitation charges/ commission to the team members.
They also arrested cleaner Pervaiz Masih in Karachi who was recruited by Saleem Natiq. He worked for notorious drug smuggler Shahida who got arrested in Nepal a few years ago, while her rest of the group dissolved. In current setting Akbar alias Badshah Khan instigated Pervaiz Masih for drug trafficking and made him a vital member of drug trafficking organization. Pervaiz Masih then recruited other members in the network to transport drugs inside the airport and plant it in the planes.
He said that ANF team also arrested other PIA employees at Karachi including Pervaiz Alam, Shujat Hussain, Muhammad Saqib, Iqbal Masih, Maqbool Masih, Gopi Darshan, Imran Baig, Waseem Fareedi and Syed Ghulam Yazdani. The DG ANF said that ANF team arrested Saleem Natiq, a PIA employee at Lahore, who was posted from Karachi to Lahore in Apr 2017 after the 1st discovery of heroin on 3 April. He has been arrested from Lahore.
Another Saleem Khan was arrested at Rawalpindi who is an ex-lower staff employee of PIA and was terminated from job after drug case. The ANF arrested another Syed Anwer Shah who was serving in IT Dept of PIA and had access to complete information about schedule of aircraft including their stay in maintenance hangers.
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