DUSHANBE, June 11, 2012, Asia-Plus  -- Abulkhair Muminov, the chief of the Panji Poyon customs checkpoint, has been detained by officers from the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) on suspicion of having misused official powers.

An official source at the Customs Service under the Government of Tajikistan has confirmed this information, but he refrained from giving further details.

Panji Poyon (also known since the times of the Soviet Union as Nizhniy Pyandzh) is a border and customs checkpoint on the Tajik side of the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border.  Both Tajik and Russian names mean literally “Lower Panj.”