Rawalpindi court jails man 10 years in hundi, hawala case

A Rawalpindi court has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and fined him Rs 1 million in an illegal hundi and hawala case that the Federal Investigation Agency built on more than Rs 108 million of bank transfers.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Irfan Anjum passed the order in case No. C-18/2026 after the convict, Khan Bahadur Khan, pleaded guilty, an FIA official said, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. The case was investigated by the FIA's Commercial Banking Circle in Islamabad.

The investigation found that more than Rs 108 million had been transferred into Khan's bank account from several sources, including M/s Shaheen Air International, the official said. The transactions did not match the income and business activity the convict had declared.

The case was registered on the basis of banking records, witness statements and other evidence collected during the investigation, the official said.

The court convicted him under Sections 5, 8 and 23 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, as amended in 2020. The Act governs dealings in foreign exchange in Pakistan.

Hundi and hawala move money outside the banking system, often across borders, and leave no formal record of the transfer. Pakistani authorities treat the channels as a route for sending funds abroad without a regulatory trail, and the FIA's commercial banking circles pursue cases assembled from bank transaction records.

The FIA account did not name the other sources of the transfers besides Shaheen Air International, and did not say whether the convict would appeal.