Pakistani police dismantle human organ trafficking ring – They lured children and sold their kidneys for prices that reached 900,000 rupees (3,600 euros)
Pakistani police said today they have busted a human organ trafficking ring, tracking down a 14-year-old boy who had been missing for several weeks and left for dead after a kidney was removed.
“I am grateful that the police found him in time,” the boy’s father told AFP in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, where he had disappeared.
“It was only when we tracked him down that we discovered an organ-trafficking operation was behind the boy’s disappearance,” Rehan Anzum, a police spokesman for the central-eastern Punjab province, told AFP.
“The boy told us that when he woke up an Arab man was on a stretcher next to him, so we believe most of the customers were foreigners,” Anzoom said, adding that six people have been arrested.
The traffickers lured their young and vulnerable victims with the promise of lucrative jobs, before removing certain organs – mainly kidneys – which they sold for up to 900,000 rupees (€3,600).
The victims were being taken to a secret organ transplant lab in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.
Such clandestine laboratories in Pakistan in most cases do not have the medical equipment or expertise required for a transplant, and patients have died there from complications in the past.
Police said they have not yet identified the doctors involved in the operation.
Pakistan banned the trade in human organs in 2010, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
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