Six staff of Pakistan’s FIA at Torkham beaten by its security forces

Six staff of Pakistan’s Federal Investi­gation Agency (FIA) were injured during an altercation with its border guards at Torkham on Sunday, Pakistani media reported.

The incident caused the border crossing to remain shut for over several hours.

The FIA and the Fro­ntier Corps gave conflicting accounts of the incident, both accusing each other of malpractice and undue interference in their official responsibilities, Dawn newspaper reported.

The immigration staff, including one of the inju­red, accused the border guards of forcing them to allow an Afghan national to cross without undergoing the necessary immigration formalities. They clai­med that the Afghan nati­onal in question possessed a fake travel document.

They said that security personnel first thrashed the FIA officer who refused to allow the Afghan national to cross, then a group of security personnel armed with rifles and batons entered the FIA premises and started beating up their staff, injuring six of them.

Three of the injured were taken to the District Headquarters Hospital in Landi Kotal.

The other three were detained by security forces, but were later handed over to FIA officials. One of them was later shifted to Peshawar for treatment of his injuries.

On the other hand, an FC statement accused the FIA staff of allowing Afghan nationals to enter Pakistan without legal travel documents after taking bribes.

It claimed that two days ago, border forces had arrested two Afghan nationals who had been ‘cleared’ by FIA immigration staff without being entered in the official record.