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LAHORE : Two passengers travelling to Colombo were offloaded by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) at Allama Iqbal International Airport on Saturday, leading to a protest and heated exchange between the passengers and FIA officials.
According to airport sources, Umar and Abu Bakar were scheduled to travel to Colombo on Sri Lankan Airlines flight UL-154. They had obtained their boarding passes and reached the immigration counter for clearance when FIA officials stopped them during profiling and prevented them from travelling to Sri Lanka.
The passengers claimed that their travel documents were complete and questioned the decision to offload them. A video showing the two passengers protesting and attempting to record FIA officials also surfaced.
Following the incident, FIA officials called Airport Security Force (ASF) personnel, who took the passengers to the airline counter. The ASF staff provided them with offloading pro formas before transferring them to the control room.
After completion of the required legal formalities, ASF personnel allowed both passengers to return home.
FIA officials advised passengers to have their travel documents checked by the relevant authorities through the pre-immigration process before departure. They said passengers would be informed in advance if any issue was identified in their documents during the process.
