GUJRAT, Aug 20: The mystery of misuse of stolen Pakistani passport booklets has been resolved with the arrest of three passengers by the immigration authorities at Lahore airport on the charge of travelling on such passports.

Immigration sources told this correspondent on Thursday that Kazim Hassan, Pervez Khan and Anjum Ali, who belonged to Rawalpindi, arrived at Lahore airport on Aug 11 by a flight (PK-758) from London. During document verification process, the computer detected that their passports were stolen from different offices, including those in Peshawar and Swat.

They quoted the arrested passengers as informing the officials at the FIA passport cell that they had purchased the booklets after paying handsome amount to an agent in the UK. They added that "purchasing stolen Pakistani passport booklets from abroad is not an uphill task."

Sources in the Gujrat regional passport office and the interior ministry claimed that a racket having links with some big human traffickers had been involved in stealing green blank copies from different passport offices for the last 15 years. They said the racket had stolen more than 40,000 blank copies.

The sources said over 22,000 blank copies were stolen from different offices only during the last five years. On April 12, 1999, around 185 blank passport copies were stolen from the Muzaffarabad regional passport office.

Later, it went to Dera Ismail Khan passport office in August 1999 from where it succeeded in stealing 1,960 blank copies. The gangsters then stole 1,122 passport booklets in March 2000 from the Sialkot office.

This incident was followed by a theft of around 2,200 blank copies from the regional passport office in Quetta the same year. In June 2000, the racket got possession of 2,160 blank booklets from Abbottabad. After a gap of almost one year, it reached the Multan regional office from where it took away 2,120 blank copies.

Thereafter, 1,000 blank copies were stolen in September 2001 from Gujranwala and 2,200 booklets were found missing from the custody of the railway authorities in Peshawar in the last month of the year.

Later in May 2002, a similar theft incident occurred in the regional passport office of Sukkur from where the racket stole some 1,400 blank copies. The organized gang then snatched some 3,000 passport booklets from postal authorities during transit to Swat in August 2002.

The sources further said the racket then targeted the regional passport office in Faisalabad from where it took away 4,000 booklets in May 2003. After every theft incident, the authorities concerned had lodged cases with relevant police stations and departmental inquiries were conducted, but all efforts to trace the culprits proved futile.

The FIA and the interior ministry's passport and immigration wing also failed to find any clue to the gang, they said. According to some other sources, the members of the passport theft could include big human traffickers or they must have links with traffickers.

In most of the theft incidents, they claimed, it was revealed that the passport booklets were found missing from the safe custody lock-ups, which were not broken. The situation indicated that the passport office employees were involved in the crime, they said.

Answering a question, they claimed that a stolen passport booklet could be misused in many ways. The gangsters used fake stamps used in preparation of passports or to show exit or arrival entry on it.

They said a criminal (either a proclaimed offender or someone wanted by any internal or external agency) could contact this racket and get his passport after paying handsome amount.

Responding to another question, they said, the immigration authorities had fed the entire record of the stolen passport booklets in computers installed at almost all international airports of the country.

But none of the foreign embassies in Pakistan had any record of the stolen passport booklets and these men could get visa of any gulf country from the relevant embassy and cross over the border to enter Afghanistan or Iran from where they easily succeeded in flying over to their destination.

Those Pakistanis, who went abroad on fake travel documents with the help of human traffickers, could get the passport transferred to their name by contacting the racket. They claimed that there were so many other misuses of the stolen passport booklets by human traffickers, the main buyers of stolen blank copies.