SC surprised over meagre allocation for FIA’s investigations

ISLAMABAD: At a time when the country is combating the scourge of terrorism, the Supreme Court was surprised on Thursday when it was informed that the total annual budget of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for chasing culprits and investigating crimes was a measly Rs1.6 million.

“We are talking about technology to track crimes and terrorism in this modern world and you are giving only Rs1.6m for the entire country,” Justice Qazi Faez Isa regretted while pointing to Interior Secretary Shahid Khan, who was summoned by the court to explain the situation.

“Do you think one lac rupees a month are enough for investigations in a country which is fighting terrorism? Is this how the government functions,” he wondered.

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“Effectively, the FIA is a dead body,” said Justice Isa, a member of the three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, which had taken up an appeal filed by Raja Mohammad Farooq seeking cancellation of bail for Azhar Iqbal allegedly involved in human trafficking.

Azhar Iqbal, along with Ali Raza and Walid Raza, is accused of illegally sending people to Greece through sea. Amjad Hussain, one of the victims who was smuggled to Greece in 2011 after a payment of Rs800,000, was later killed over a money dispute after reaching Turkey.

The interior secretary informed the court that the government had allocated Rs1.6 billion for the FIA in the budget for 2015-16. Of this, Rs1.3bn (80 per cent) was establishment (salary and others) cost and the rest (20pc) operational cost. The allocation was for 20 heads, of which Rs1.6m was earmarked for investigation of cases.

The secretary said that during 2014-15 the FIA had received 11,384 complaints and conducted investigations into 7,303 cases, adding that the entire information was being misconstrued and misunderstood as whenever the FIA fell short of money, the government provided it supplementary grants to meet its expenses.

The secretary said that during the current year the FIA had approached the interior ministry for an increase in the allocation for investigations to Rs110m, but the ministry revised it to Rs30m and sent it to the finance department, which further reduced the allocation to Rs3m.

At this the chief justice recalled a case in which FIA’s budget got exhausted because it had to spend Rs1.7m to bring a culprit from Ecuador. “We were told earlier in some other matter how 18,000 high-profile cases had to be dumped because of lack of funds,” he regretted.

How the FIA was carrying out its functions under the National Action Plan (NAP) with such meagre funds, Justice Dost Mohammad wondered.

“For God’s sake don’t play with the fate of the country,” he said, adding that people went abroad with great difficulty but they still managed to send $18bn annually as remittances. “But instead of facilitating them our finance minister visits Dubai and Qatar to arrange $2bn form international lenders that has to be paid in four years with interest,” Justice Dost Mohammad regretted.

Citing an example of Chaman, a town in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan, Justice Isa said that there was no official record of thousands of people crossing into Pakistan daily because of lack of monitoring by the FIA’s immigration wing.

“Are our borders secured? Everything is going up in this country, but not the amount meant for investigations. This shows that fighting crime is no priority for the government,” he regretted.

While adjourning the case to Friday, the chief justice asked Attorney General Salman Aslam Butt to submit a report explaining that the Supreme Court should shut the case because all was well and the FIA was working efficiently with such a meagre amount for investigations and did not need fund because it was adequate.

The report should also explain why the culprits involved in human smuggling were not being brought back by issuing red warrants through the Interpol.

“We actually have no compassion,” the chief justice said, adding that people were dying every day while leaving the country, but “we live in ivory towers”.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2015

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