ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s customs officials thwarted an illegal attempt to ship animals, including falcons, houbara bustards and Sindh ibexes, in a chartered plane from the airport in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
At about 12:45 pm, a small chartered plane landed at the airport, where around a dozen vehicles including jeeps, cars and three trucks loaded with animals were waiting.
The airport does not have much traffic about three planes land there each week. The trucks reportedly contained live animals that had been caught from different parts of rural Sindh and the mountainous areas along the Hyderabad-Karachi highway.
But the media and Customs officials got wind of this and rushed to the airport. As the plane’s cargo hatch opened and men began offloading the cages, journalists with cameras started taking pictures.
Amjad Aman, the assistant collector from the customs department, said that the intelligence wing conducted a raid. He added that the officials searched the plane which he claimed was from the United Arab Emirates - and found a number of cages inside it.
The head of the anti-smuggling squad in Hyderabad, Ghulam Rasool Memom, said that the raid had been conducted by the director of intelligence, Irfan Ahmed. The plane took off at around 1:40pm - without the haul that it had come for.
Police chief opposes Karachi operation
ISLAMABAD: The provincial chief of Pakistan’s Sindh police Fayyaz Leghari said an army operation should not be conducted in Karachi, adding that the capacity of the already present paramilitary forces in the city should be increased.
Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad, IG Sindh Leghari said that the army will not be called in during Muharram and they have only been asked to remain on standby.
While talking about the law and order situation in Karachi, Leghari said it was not sectarian problems but a third element that was involved in making the city unstable. IG Sindh Leghari further claimed that 165 target killers and 12,000 terrorists have been arrested till now, adding that no members of political wings were among those arrested.
Internews
