KARACHI: Police on Wednesday arrested seven persons, including a Chinese national, for their alleged involvement in the “illegal” trade of donkey hides.

They claimed to have seized over 4,700 hides worth Rs118 million in the international market.

The Sharea Faisal police said that the hides were brought here from Lahore to ship to China, where the animal skins are being used in traditional Chinese medicines considered to be ‘beneficial’ for blood diseases.

They said that acting on a tip-off, a police team carried out a raid in Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s Block 12 and arrested a Chinese national and six Pakistanis, including a woman, and seized donkey hides.

The suspects were identified as Tu Zhong Xiao, Ihtisham Ahmed, his wife Afshan, M. Daniyal, M. Jumman, M. Faisal and Zeeshan Patras.

The police said that three of the held suspects’ accomplices were at large.

A total of 4,736 hides packed in 592 bags, with each bag containing eight hides of the animal, were seized.

The officials said that the price of each hide in the international market stood at Rs25,000, thus the estimated worth of the seized hides stood at over Rs118m.

They said that the hides were being used in China to manufacture Ejiao — gelatine obtained from the skin of the donkey by soaking and stewing and used as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine — believed to be beneficial for blood diseases.

According to a police statement: “This [trade] has become a profitable business for criminal elements and causing a huge financial loss to the country in terms of exports. Besides, it’s a tragedy that such forbidden meat of donkeys is being fed to the people.”

The police action was taken under Sections 54 (when police may arrest without warrant) and 550 (powers to police to seize property suspected to be stolen) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

A police spokesperson said in a statement that since the police did not conduct investigations of such cases, the held suspects and the seized hides were being handed over to Customs officials for further legal action.

Earlier this year, the National Assembly was informed that a total of 141,075 hides of donkeys were exported to China, Vietnam and Hong Kong from 2011 to 2015.

India and Pakistan had the highest donkey population, but it was being exterminated very quickly in Pakistan through poisoning.

The drop in the number of donkeys could be gauged from the fact that export proceeds of donkey hides tripled in a year to over Rs135m till June 30, 2015 from Rs44m.

In September 2015, the government had imposed a temporary ban on the export in view of the possible extinction of the animal or consumption of its meat.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2017