FIA issues human traffickers’ list in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD:  The list of proclaimed offenders in human trafficking in the country has been issued by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Friday.

The list the FIA declared included 100 offenders as most wanted and proclaimed offenders and five most wanted women criminals. The investigation agency has named 43 proclaimed offenders wanted in human smuggling offence from Punjab.

According to FIA, the names of three human traffickers added in last year’s list of 28 proclaimed offenders from Islamabad and carried 12 names of human smugglers from Sindh and two from Balochistan respectively.

It is to be mentioned here that in a recently held seminar over the issue it was disclosed that women and girls were disproportionately impacted by human trafficking problem, and according to global estimates women and girls constituted up to 80 percent of people trafficked globally and more than 60 percent of those trafficked belonged to Asia.

In this regard, the FIA official said that women in Pakistan are not only being trafficked from rural areas of southern Punjab and Balochistan, but also from major cities such as Karachi, Lahore, and Faisalabad. Some of them were also trafficked to China on the excuse of marriage.