Illegal organ trade

The recent bust of another organ trafficking ring in Rawalpindi — the second in a single week — exposes a festering criminal epidemic just a few kilometres from the capital. Police raided a private bungalow in a housing society to find a man strapped to a stretcher, sedated and moments away from having his kidney forcibly removed. This follows an identical raid days earlier, where victims were lured by fake job offers, only to wake up mutilated and abandoned. Such incidents are not anomalies but symptoms of a systematic trade preying on the vulnerable while authorities lag in response.

Criminal networks operate with chilling sophistication. They scout impoverished villages and urban centres, promising lucrative jobs or exploiting debts to coerce victims into “donating” organs. Once trapped, victims are imprisoned in clandestine clinics — often makeshift operating theatres in residential homes — where unqualified personnel remove kidneys for wealthy domestic and foreign clients.

Survivors describe beatings, psychological torture and lifelong health complications. Many of the victims are already impoverished and are forced or fooled into giving up their organs for little-to-no money, while ‘willing’ donors are scammed into donating kidneys for around Rs500,000 each without being made aware of the lifelong health risks of the procedure heightened by the fact the procedures are performed at makeshift clinics and most ‘donors’ cannot afford or maintain proper post-operative care.

Despite longstanding bans on organ sales, enforcement remains woefully inadequate. Traffickers exploit legal loopholes to avoid detection and capture, and even when they are held, many just use their illegal earnings to buy their way out. This is why we must not only ensure that organ traffickers are given the maximum amount of time in jail, but also introduce reforms that make it harder for such criminals to get access to bail or other privileges that go to non-violent offenders.