PESHAWAR, March 2: Human trafficking is on the rise because of incompetent investigating officers, according to Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court Tariq Pervez Khan.

He said investigators detained victims in such cases but did not probe the root causes leading to the crime and did nothing to prevent recruiting agents defraud innocent people.

He made these observations on Friday while granting bail to an Afghan refugee, Juma Gul, who had been detained at the Peshawar airport by the Federal Investigation Agency on Jan 12. He was directed to furnish two sureties of Rs100,000 each. The court ordered that since the petitioner was an Afghan national residing in Pakistan, the sureties should be provided by individuals from the settled district.

The man had been accused of carrying a forged passport in the name of Khairullah and had been charged under sections 419, 420, 468 and 471 of Pakistan Penal Code and section 14 of the Foreigners Act.

Earlier, the accused claimed that he had been living in Pakistan for the past 29 years and that the passport in his possession had been given to him by one Saeed who had taken from him two photographs and Rs100,000 besides promising that he would arrange other travel documents.

The court observed that the police had not bothered to verify if the accused was telling the truth or not and to-date Saeed had not been arrested as an accused. “If the investigating agency (seriously) wants to curb … human trafficking, then … one can say that petitioner had been a victim rather than an accused who … himself had been cheated,” Justice Tariq observed.

Petitioner’s lawyer Asthagfirullah Khan contended that there was no evidence that the petitioner had forged or tampered with the passport. He contended that the Foreigners Act did not apply on the petitioner as he an Afghan refugee, adding that at the most, he could be charged under the Passport Act.

NAZIM RESTRAINED: The Peshawar High Court on Friday restrained a union council nazim from performing his duties and admitted a writ petition against him for full hearing.