PESHAWAR, May 5: District Nazim of Swabi, Shahram Khan Tarkai, allegedly used force to get a relative freed by force from the Kalu Khan police station. The man had been detained by the crime circle of Federal Investigation Agency on human trafficking charges, official sources told Dawn on Friday.

The FIA crime circle arrested Mohammad Iqbal from Shawadher village for taking people to Muscat without travel documents. He was later handed over to the Kalu Khan police station.

Nazim Shahram Khan Tarkai and his more than 200 supporters allegedly encircled the police station and forced police and the FIA team to release him, the sources said.

The FIA crime circle had recently sent a letter to Additional Director General FIA Tariq Khosa and informed him about the incident of April 26, they said.

An officer of the Kalu Khan police station said that Iqbal was released because the FIA had not written the name of the father the accused and the trafficker could be some other person of the same area.

The sources said that the FIA had also allowed Mohammad Iqbal to go home on a surety of Rs500,000 offered by Mr Tarkai, who also promised that he (Iqbal) would be produced to the FIA regional headquarters in Peshawar whenever required.

The FIA crime made several requests to the Swabi district nazim to send Mohammad Iqbal to Peshawar for inquiry into the case of human smuggling. But the nazim ignored the requests, the sources said.

Thousands of Pakistanis have been deported by Oman over the past two years, but all of them were allowed to go to their homes without any investigation.

About two months ago, Director General FIA Tariq Pervez, asked the passport circle of regional offices to interrogate deported persons in Karachi upon their arrival and identify the man behind the crime.

The FIA crime circle identified 19 people from the NWFP and registered a case against them for human smuggling, sources said.

The FIA authorities, during the interrogation of deported people, only wrote down names of the traffickers without mentioning father’s name and addresses.

The incomplete information about the traffickers was the main hurdle in arresting them, the sources said.

The FIA crime circle claims to have arrested the main culprit involved in sending thousands of illiterate jobseekers from Swabi to Oman, the sources said.

Abid Iqbal, one of the 19 identified traffickers from the Frontier province, was arrested from a place near Kohati canal in Swabi on Thursday.

The FIA team brought the accused to Peshawar, where he confessed to having sent thousands of people to Oman illegally, the sources said.

In the FIR, Abid Iqbal’s father’s name was not mentioned, the sources said adding that the crime circle claimed to have confirmed his involvement in trafficking before arresting him.

Abid Iqbal is reported to have told FIA that he had smuggled the job-seekers to Oman through the Mund Billo border region in Chagai district of Balochistan.

He alleged that he and other traffickers had paid bribe to Pakistan border guards and Iranian security personnel for smuggling people.

He added that the traffickers first smuggled people to Iran from where they were transported to the Middle East countries on motorboats sailing from places near Bandar Abbas, the main seaport of Iranian Seistan province.

He also mentioned names of his two accomplices from Swabi district and the FIA has started hunt for them.