LAHORE: The recent arrest of key members of a human organ trading gang involving Pakistani and Indian doctors has shocked the nation, with many questions being raised on performance of medical and immigration authorities.
A tip-off from the Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority (PHOTA) helped the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) nab four people from Ranipind, a village close to the Wagah border this week.They are named as: Irfan Munir, a resident of Sahiwal; Muhamammad Hanif, a resident of Deebalpur area of Okara district; Ali Hanif, from Lahore; and Mubashar Hussain from Gujrat. Soon as the officials found out that these agents worked for a doctor, Azizur Rehman, they raided Pak Health Care Clinic in Lahore’s Shah Jamal area. The suspect, however, managed to escape.
Besides recovering passports and foreign currency in the raids, investigators also got a hold on records of more than 500 patients treated by Indian doctors.Initial investigations reveal these agents, working on commission for Dr Aziz, would prepare bogus documents including birth certificate, affidavit, family registration certificate (FRC), of the victims showing blood relationship between donor and recipients. The gang members would then take these donors across the border on fake papers and give them some money for the transplant.
Most of illegal transplant were done by Dr. Subhash Gupta in New Dehli and doctors of Fortress Hospital Neda India and Dr Zewakh, according to a report by The Nation.The Indian doctors also came to Pakistan for providing consultancy and marketing, the newspaper reports.
The Ranipind raids follows the shocking scandal of Dr Alatmash and Dr Fawad, two senior members of Young Doctors’ Association (YDA), who were caught red-handed while operating the patients in a rented house in a private housing society of Lahore in 2017.
At the time of the raid last May, two donors a rickshaw driver Amir and a woman Roushni had undergone surgery on a promise of Rs 150,000 each. According to FIA officials, these kidneys were to be transplanted to two Omani nationals.
FIA officials say the latest arrests are expected to lead to a bigger international gang involved in organ transplants in the country and abroad.
Pakistan outlawed the commercial trade of human body parts in 2010, introducing jail sentence of up to 10 years. The Punjab Human Organ Transplant Act 2013 allows organ donation only among the immediate relatives.
Adnan Ahmad Bhatti, the head of PHOTA’s Vigilance Cell, says a number of powerful mafias are operating in Pakistan despite strict implementation of organ donation and transplantation rules by authorities. “As the government has criminalised the illegal trade and transplant of human organs, tissue and stem cells, such gangs take advantage of the suffering of patients with end-stage organ failure. A dying man would give anything for another breath of life, but these illegal transplants are never successful and it always ends up badly for the patients – both the donor and the recipient,” Mr Bhatti told Daily Pakistan.
The PHOTA deputy director said his team was tracking the four-member gang for several weeks. “It is a big achievement for us that we remained successful in catching these criminals,” he added.
The PHOTA is an apex body working diligently under Prof. Dr. Faisal Masood to protect innocent people of Punjab from falling prey to commercial dealings.Since its inception in 2013, the Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority (PHOTA) has busted dozens of cases of illegal trade and transplantation of vital human organs.
Last week, the authority carried out a raid in the provincial capital with the help of Special Branch-Lahore and caught Shahzada, an organ trader, along with the kidney donor who was due to undergo a surgery.
The suspect had had already received Rs 20,000 from patient, identified as Shahzeb, as an advance payment of a Rs 2 million deal.