Haji Mirza Mohammed Iqbal Beg, once reputedly the head of Pakistan's largest drug syndicate, and his lieutenant, Mohammed Anwar Khattak were extradited to US in April 1995. During the eighties Mirza Iqbal Baig was called "King of Indian Route" control over the heroin trafficking across the Indian border. He als had close contacts with Malik Meraj Khalid of Pakistan Peoples Party.
In Pakistan, during the 80s Haji Ayub Afridi along with Mirza Iqbal Beg were considered the top Pakistani drug barons, controlling nearly all of the herion smuggling through Pakistan.
Sikh Insurgency
It is widely believed that Iqbal Baig cooperated with the ISI in its programme to assist the Sikh seperatist movement in India in the eighties.
Incident with Panorama
In 1986 the British Broadcasting Corporation's documentary programme, Panorama, told the tale of a Japanese courier named Hisayoshi Maruyama who was arrested in Amsterdam in May 1983 carrying 17 kilos of high grade heroin.
Serving a ten-year sentence in a Dutch prison, he spoke on camera describing the organisation in Pakistan with which he had worked as a courier for several years. Maruyama identified the head of the syndicate as Mirza Iqbal Baig who based his smuggling operation out of the Plaza and Capital cinemas in Lahore. A BBC team travelled to Pakistan and managed to briefly meet Baig in his office at the Plaza cinema. Carrying a disguised camera and microphone, the BBC reporters began to interview Baig about allegations concerning his involvement in heroin smuggling.
The two British reporters were promptly dragged out of Baig's officeby a dozen thugs and severely beaten on the road in front of the cinema. The cinema is opposite the town' s main police station, and as the two journalists were kicked and their equipment smashed, the localpolice stood and watched. The police were no fools. They knew not to interfere with Baig's men
Iqbal Baig is well known in Lahore for the political and commercialassociations he maintains in high government circles at the provincial and national level. The immunity and protection he enjoys is quite evident. Besides the BBC programme, Baig was named when the Pakistan press in October 1986 published a list of 30 known drug smugglers which had been drawn up by the country's Narcotics Control Board and presented to the Interior Minister, Aslam Khathak.
The Islamabad newspaper, The Muslim, quoted a custom's intelligence agent describing Baig as the "most active dope dealer in the country." Many of the names cited by The Muslim from the PNCB report were read out in the National Assembly by the Interior Minister. However, no arrests were made
Twelve days after General Zia ul Haq's death in an aircrash, the government-owned Pakistan Times in its Lahore edition, published a prominent front page advertisement signed by Iqbal Baig extending his personal greetings to the new President and the commanders of the Armed Forces.
1990s
Malik Meraj Khalid is amongst the closest political allies of Iqbal Beg. Iqbal Beg financed the election campaigns of Malik Meraj Khalid in eighties and nineties. When Iqbal Baig was arrested in 1990 on drug trafficking charges by the PPP government, Malik Meraq Khalid was the negotiator was his bail and sent his personal car to pick Iqbal Baig up.
In the 1990 election Iqbal Beg also made significant contributions to the IJI.
Extradition
After Mirza Muhammad Iqbal Beg's extradition to US in 1995 his drug empire was taken over by his close associate and Nawaz Sharif's cousin Sohail Zia Butt.
