Seven remanded for three days, three at large

Accused doctor says police mistreated him, demanded bribe.

LAHORE:

A judicial magistrate on Saturday remanded seven people accused of conducting illegal kidney transplants in North Cantt police custody for three days.

Ghulam Abbas, who is in charge of investigations at North Cantt police station, produced seven handcuffed men named Dr Anees, Dr Mubashir, Mushtaq Ahmed, Muhammad Imran, Sagheer Younis, Nadeem Fiaz and Ali Akbar before Magistrate Malik Shafique Ahmed and sought to keep them for seven days.

He said that three others were wanted, including Dr Sanaullah, Dr Imran Ali of Mayo Hospital and Muhammad Khurshid, the alleged ringleader and owner of the property where the illegal transplants were conducted.

Abbas said that the police would check the accused doctors’ degrees to see if they were genuine. He said the gang had been conducting transplants since last year. He said that neighbours told the police that they would see two or three people carrying X-rays visit the house every day.

Advocate Rizwan Chaudhry, representing the accused, said the charges against his clients were completely untrue. He said that they ran a dispensary from the house where the poor got free treatment and medicine.

Abbas pointed out that there was no signboard at the site advertising the free dispensary.

Dr Mubashir told the court that he had been mistreated and slapped by police officials. He said he was a young doctor and the only operations he had done were minor ones, not transplants.

He said that on the day of the arrest, a group of men in shalwar kameez had forced their way into the dispensary and started thrashing them and accusing them of running a brothel. He said one of them, who introduced himself as Sub-Inspector Saeed, offered to let them go if they paid him Rs700,000. He asked the court to release them.

After hearing from both sides, the judicial magistrate handed over the seven accused to North Cantt police for three days.

According to the case file, Muhammad Riaz moved the FIR under Sections 334/511 and 109/342 of the Pakistan Penal Code against the accused.

The complainant said that he was poor and unemployed and needed money. He said that on June 30, a man named Muhammad Younis had convinced him to sell his kidney. He was taken to a house on Street #6, Block-A, Al-Faisal Town, where he was directed to lie on a stretcher. Then doctors told him that his kidney would be transplanted to a man named Abdullah, a foreigner. He would be paid Rs110,000 for his kidney.

Riaz said that he then changed his mind and created a hue and cry that alerted the neighbours, who gathered at the scene and rescued him. He said in the FIR that the accused tried to remove his kidney and legal action should be taken against them.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 3^rd, 2011.