LAHORE, July 28: A group of 319 people deported from Turkey arrived here on Monday.

Among them was Mohammad Qasim with a bullet still in his leg indicating his sufferings as an illegal alien. “Now I know that there is no place like home. Pakistan is truly a heaven on earth,” said 20-year-old Qasim, who had paid Rs300,000 to a human trafficker in Gujranwala three months ago to go to Greece.

The deportees were flown back on a PIA plane. Most of them, who were languishing in Turkish prisons for at least three months, had been detained when they tried to illegally enter Turkey via Iran. Some of them had overstayed in that country.

After recording their statements, Assistant Director of the Federal Investigation Agency (Immigration) Aqeel Ahmed told Dawn, the deportees would be handed over to various authorities for further investigation.

He said that most of them belonged to Gujrat, Gujranwala and Mandi Bahuddin, and a few were from Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Karachi.

Arif Bokhari, FIA’s assistant director of Passport Circle in Gujrawanwala, said that his office had received more than 300 of the deportees. He said they had been booked under a joint FIR and would be produced before a court on Tuesday.

Mohammad Qasim and another deportee, Mohammad Tahir, were allowed to go home on health grounds. Tahir was suffering from a skin disease.

Qasim told this correspondent that he had made the payment to a man named Razaak Cheema to help him to go to Greece. “I travelled with six other Pakistanis. After crossing into Turkey via Iran, border guards shot at us. I got hit by a bullet in my leg. I don’t know how many others were injured.” Qasim said he had not received proper medical treatment.

Some organised networks of human traffickers are reportedly working in Gujranwala and their agents charge anywhere between Rs300,000 to Rs500,000 for illegally sending people to Greece via Iran and Turkey by road.

According to FIA officials, their main concern was to get information from the deportees about the human traffickers.

He said that the traffickers continued to dupe people despite the fact that only a few succeed in safely reaching the country they want to go to.

They said that during the past year, more than 3,000 people from Gujranwala had been deported from Iran, Turkey, Greece or Spain. About 1,800 were from Mandi Bahauddin, 1,200 from Gujrat and some from Hafizabad and Narowal.

He said over the past year, about 500 suspected human traffickers had been arrested and 350 had been convicted.