Woman held for Haj and Umrah scam

MANSEHRA: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested a woman ringleader of a gang that had deprived hundreds of men and women of their hard-earned money in the garb of low-priced Haj and Umrah schemes.

“We have arrested a central accused wanted by our agency in cases where she and her gang fleeced money from hundreds of men and women in the name of low-priced Haj and Umrah here in Hazara and now in Rawalpindi,” Sardarullah Babar, the deputy director FIA Hazara circle, told reporters on Thursday.

A joint team of police and FIA led by SHO Ziaul Islam raided the Banda Lal Khan area and arrested Shahnaz Bibi and shifted her to the agency’s divisional headquarters in Abbottabad.

“The National Accountability Bureau had initiated the investigation against Bibi in 2017 and later on, the case was referred to our agency but she had moved Peshawar High Court’s Abbottabad Circuit Bench seeking relief as the court lifted statuesque, we raided and arrested her,” Babar said.

The DG FIA said that around 100 applicants had moved to his agency seeking arrest and recovery of their money which that fraudulent group fleeced from them in the name of low-priced Haj and Umrah schemes.

“The women had also paid huge sums of money to the arrested accused to perform Haj and Umrah at low prices since 2017 even 2023,” Babar said.