RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Coast Guards have foiled an attempt to smuggle a large cache of contraband in the Pishukan area of Balochistan, seizing a quantity of liquor and illegal medicines in a joint intelligence-based operation.
According to an official statement issued on Wednesday, the operation was conducted in coordination with the Joint Maritime Information Coordination Centre (JMICC) and was mounted on what the statement described as actionable intelligence.
The operation resulted in the confiscation of a sizeable quantity of liquor and illegal medicines, the statement said. The seized items have been handed over to the Pakistan Coast Guards for further legal proceedings.
No arrests were mentioned in the statement, and no figures were given for the volume or estimated value of the goods recovered.
Pishukan lies on the Makran coast in Balochistan’s Gwadar district, a stretch of shoreline of small fishing settlements, open beaches and few formal landing points. That geography has long made the coast attractive to smuggling networks moving goods in both directions — fuel and consumer items outward, and contraband inward, often on small boats that can be beached almost anywhere.
Enforcement along this coastline is therefore a matter of coverage rather than of checkpoints. The Coast Guards hold the land-side mandate, while the Navy and the Maritime Security Agency operate at sea, and the JMICC exists to pull the picture together — collating information from naval, civil and commercial sources so that a single reported movement can be acted on quickly. The statement’s emphasis on inter-agency coordination is a reference to that structure.
Of the two categories of goods named, the medicines are the more consequential. Pharmaceuticals brought in outside the regulatory system carry no assurance of composition, storage conditions or expiry, and they enter a market where buyers have no way to tell the difference. Smuggled and counterfeit medical goods have surfaced in enforcement drives elsewhere in the country, including an FIA case in Lahore involving counterfeit goods and hawala transactions.
The liquor seizure falls under a separate legal regime. Its manufacture, sale and import are tightly restricted in Pakistan, and enforcement is routine at both provincial and federal level — Lahore police, for instance, recovered liquor alongside narcotics in raids.
The announcement comes amid a broader push against trafficking and revenue leakage. Federal authorities have moved against human smuggling networks in a nationwide operation, while the customs service has faced scrutiny from within after three serving officials were arrested in a fraud case. Changes to duty structures under the new auto policy are also expected to alter the economics of some smuggled goods over time.
The statement said the operation underscored the effectiveness of inter-agency coordination in countering smuggling, and highlighted the resolve of the Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Coast Guards to prevent the use of Pakistani waters and land for illicit activities.
Leave a Reply