No record of people entering Pakistan exists: SC

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday observed how the war against terrorism would be won when there was no record of people entering Pakistan from Afghanistan.
It observed that containers of dollars would be seized at the Chaman and Torkham borders if proper checking was conducted.
The apex court constituted a commission to monitor the check posts at the Chaman and Torkham borders and submit a report pertaining to illegal immigration.
A three-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Jawwad S Khawaja and comprising Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Qazi Faiz Isa heard the case of human trafficking.
“Torkham and Chaman borders are not being monitored and it’s not difficult to enter and exit from Pakistan, hence we are appointing a commission to secure the inviolable rights, dignity and other fundamental rights of the people,” the court ruled.
The commission comprising law officers including Waqas Rana, Additional Attorney General, Omar Farooq Adnan, Additional Advocate General, Jaffer Shah, Director FIA, along with Customs officers and Assistant Advocate General Balochistan Shahid will monitor the situation at the Torkham and Chaman borders.
The court directed that the commission was required to submit a comprehensive report with photographs of check posts and customs desk at these borders by September 1, 2015.
The court ruled that the Terms of Reference (TORs) for the commission will be issued shortly.
The court in its order noted that it was a very alarming situation how the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was dealing with immigration across the country while the agency did not have a sufficient budget.
The court further noted that the secretary interior was of the view that insufficient financial resources had made the FIA unable to enforce its functions, adding that the total budget of the agency for the financial year 2015 was Rs1.6 billion of which 80 percent was spent on salaries of the staff while 20 percent was spent on operational expenditures. He further said that out of the total budget, Rs1.6 million was for investigation purposes including telephone bills, postage, etc.
The court noted that people were desperate to leave Pakistan by any means and in this attempt, they were risking their lives. The court ruled that different aspects of such cases were also surprising as nothing had been done so far by the FIA to prosecute even a single person.
“Today, we found that the FIA had not any clue as to how to enforce its own statutes without which terrorism and smuggling could not be curbed,” the court noted.
“We are also surprised to know about the situation at both Chaman and Torkham borders when the FIA submitted that they have no jurisdiction in Fata,” the court noted, adding that the additional advocate general of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had stated that a check post was present half-a-kilometre inside Pakistan.
“Since we have been informed many times that the government is serious in fighting terrorism and acting on the National Action Plan announced in December last year, it emerged before us prima facie, there is a gap between efforts and objective reality,” the court observed in its order.
Earlier, during the course of hearing, Jaffer Shah, Director FIA, told the court that the FIA Act could not be applied to Fata, adding that local heads and personnel of the Frontier Constabulary were deputed on the borders and they were responsible for immigration. The court observed that people crossed over the border without legal documents.
Justice Qazi Faiz Isa observed that personnel of the FC were responsible for maintaining law and order and asked under what authority they were dealing with immigration. Justice Faiz Isa asked the director FIA to give a report to the court in this regard.