In its bid to counter the growing menace of human trafficking and human smuggling, the Ministry of Interior and Federal Investigation Agency nabbed 913 proclaimed offenders, 33 most wanted human traffickers, 179 court absconders and 1884 individuals for their involvement in suspicious human smuggling and trafficking activities since November, 2015.

In Punjab alone, 1553 human traffickers were arrested in 1421 raids, during the same a total of 112 raids were conducted in Islamabad where 934 arrests were made. In KPK, Sindh and Balochistan, 265, 168 and 89 human traffickers were arrested in 205, 119 and 79 raids respectively during the last one-and-a-half year, according to documents available with Pakistan Today.

In 2015 alone, 3,953 human traffickers were convicted by courts all over the Pakistan, while the number of convicts increased in year 2016 as 4,692 human smugglers and traffickers were awarded punishments thus taking the grand total to 8,645 that were nabbed by Federal Investigation Agency on human trafficking charges.

Furthermore, Ministry of Interior and FIA have decided that CNICs of those involved in human trafficking would be temporarily blocked, their passports would be cancelled and their names would be placed on Passport Control List and Exit Control List so that their movement could be restricted and tracked. Furthermore, the letters have been issued to the concerned district police officers by FIA anti-human trafficking circles to take necessary steps for their arrest and banks have also been approached to block their bank accounts.

Although more than 33 most wanted human traffickers have been arrested since the launch of crackdown back in November 2015, still 69 human traffickers were at large according to FIA’s Red Book which regularly maintained most wanted list of human traffickers that has their names, parentage, address, date of birth, CNIC numbers, passport numbers, travel history, FIR numbers, and other basic information.