Human smuggler to spend just one year in jail: Aspiring expatriates’ horrific tale
RAWALPINDI, July 29: Special Judicial Magistrate Ahmed Masood Janjua on Saturday handed down 12 months imprisonment to a convict in six different cases of fraud and money extortion.
The convict, Kursheed Ahmed, was awarded two-month imprisonment in each of the six cases and in every case he would have to pay Rs2,000 in fine.
Mr Ahmed was charged with extorting money from a man identified as Mr Iqbal and his friends on the pretext of sending them abroad.
It is not clear whether or not the penalty imposed on the fraudster will compensate for the agony that victims suffered after they were left in the lurch.
The horrors, which such people undergo, can best be understood considering the facts that a deportee, who was released on bail on July 24, shared with Dawn on Saturday.
Mohammad Asif, 29, a resident of Fatehjang, was deported from Turkey on July 10 and was later arrested by the Federal the Investigation Agency (FIA) in a case related to human smuggling.
He said his friend Nasir Iqbal promised to send him to Greece against a payment of Rs650,000. Iqbal asked for Rs110,000 in advance for the purpose.
Asif, the eldest among two brothers and two sisters, sold six kanal of agricultural land, a property his mother got from her parents, to pay for his dreams.
He along with Nasir embarked upon the adventurous journey on May 5 to reach Europe through land and sea. He promised to pay the remaining amount to Nasir’s brother, Mohammad Iqbal, back in his village.
Next day they were joined by five other boys in Wazirabad from where they all left for Lahore. Their next destination was Quetta from where they were taken to Taftan, a town near Iran Pakistan border, by bus in three days.
In Taftan, Nasir said they were 15 boys and 18 more joined them and they all were taken to Iran on foot in the darkness of night by a person, Babar Balochi, in eight hours.
He handed them over to two other persons in the Iranian town Mir Java from where they were transported in a pick-up truck to Zahidan, where they stayed in a hotel. Nasir said they had to bear all the travel expenses.
Their next destination was Mash’had, where a man – Zahid – boarded them in taxies and took them to his house. In the evening he boarded them on a Tehran-bound bus that again took 12 hours to reach its destination.
In Tehran, Mehmood received them and kept them in a safe house that consisted of one room and there they stayed for two days. In the safe house they met Haji Abdullah the main agent. He took them to Romia, a border town between Iran and Turkey.
From there on their hardest journey started. They started a 70 hours long journey on foot to a Turkish city called Goar. The route they used was covered with snow and was very difficult.
Asif told there he was abandoned by his friend Nasir. He also said that it was at this passage that most of the travellers lost their lives. He also saw human bones there. He revealed that the guide usually left behind anyone who felt fatigue or fell ill after bracing the hostile weather.
Asif said he succeeded in crossing the stretch and reached Goar from where they were taken to the Turkish city of Avan in a truck. There bad luck struck them. They were arrested from Dair Bakar town at any army picket on their way to Istanbul. They were interrogated by the Turkish police and then were deported to Islamabad on July 10.
Now disillusioned, Asif said his family paid the rest of the amount to the brother of Nasir who, according to Asif, had reached Greece. His father had paid for his return ticket and now he would fight for the return of his money.
He disclosed that the deportation centres in Turkey were filled with people, a majority of them Pakistanis, waiting for their safe return to their homelands. With fear visible in his eyes, Asif said the human smugglers could not operate so easily without the help of law-enforcement agencies in Pakistan.
Source: Dawn
Date:7/30/2007
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