Police omit Rs20m recovery in FIR

Pindi police get five-day physical remand of suspects involved in illegal organ transplants

RAWALPINDI:

A day after the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) arrested 10 people including three doctors from a private hospital for their alleged involvement in illegal organ transplants, Morgah police have registered an FIR in the case.

However, they omitted to mention in the FIR the recovery of Rs20 million from the hospital.

The Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) and Rawalpindi police raided the private hospital involved in illegal organ transplants of patients and arrested 10 people including three doctors.

The police has registered the case under several provisions including murder on a complaint of Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) Assistant Director (Vigilance) Hasan Akhtar.

The plaintiff in the case said that on March 13, he was checking various hospitals along with his team, and they reached Asia General Hospital (Al Syed General Hospital) owned by Dr Zahid Bukhari and Dr Tauseef Bukhari and during the search, they found Dr Zahid Mukhtar, Dr Athar Gilani, Dr Abid Latif, male nurse Syed Israr Hussain Shah, male nurse Rashid Mehmood, oxygen operator Shehzad Altaf Hussain, laboratory technicians Shah Nawaz and Muhammad Imran Qasim, ward boys Muhammad Asim Ward and Anas Rehman carrying out illegal kidney transplants.

It was alleged in the FIR that all the persons (now arrested) were involved in illegal kidney transplantation as facilitators.

The FIR said that the PHOTA team went to the operation theater on the second floor, where a person identified as Iftikhar Ali was in a state of unconsciousness and on a ventilator, while another patient was lying down in a state of semi-consciousness in another operation theater adjacent to the operation theatre, who later told investors that they (culprits) were intending to remove his kidney before the health authorities conducted the raid.

According to the FIR, in other rooms, Shazia Bibi, Naveed Masih, Ashraf Ali and Karamat Ali were also lying on beds. They were among those who had come to the facility to sell their kidneys for money, and their kidneys were to be removed before they were transplanted to other patients (recipients) for money. Among those who were to receive kidneys were Afghan resident Muhammad Yaqoob, Saudi resident Zinafar bin Saad, Adil Hussain, Tauqir Shehzad, Faridullah, who were present in the hospital.

The FIR stated that four to five unidentified persons of hospital staff escaped from the spot during the raid.

The FIR said that all persons were found involved in the heinous crime of illegal kidney transplants. Therefore, the provisions of The Punjab Transplantation of Human Organ and Tissues Act 2010 9/10/11/13 should be implemented against them.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2023.