PESHAWAR: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Friday informed a local court that the kidney transplant racket busted in Nowshera of late was involved in illegal transplants across the country.

Judicial magistrate Asghar Shah remanded eight of the arrested suspects, including a doctor, in the FIA custody for one day at the request of a team of the agency and ordered their production today (Saturday).

FIA assistant director (legal) Tanveer Hussain Langrial and FIA Multan SHO produced the suspects in the court seeking their further remand for five days saying they have to obtain some more important information from them.

Court remands eight suspects in FIA custody

They alleged that some very influential persons were involved in the illegal transplant business and the FIA wanted to interrogate suspects to know about other gang members.

The FIA officials said the FIA’s director general had transferred the case to the FIA Multan on Oct 3.

The suspects included Dr Abdul Aziz, who was allegedly operating on kidney donor Mohammad Babar and kidney recipient Samiullah during the FIA raid on the privately-owned Dua Surgical Hospital, Pabbi town, Nowshera on Sept 26.

The seven other suspects are medical technicians Naveed Ahmad, Mohammad Farooq and Bilal Yamin, nursing helper Mohammad Kamran, driver Shahid Iqbal and two others, including Abdur Rehman and Asmatullah.

The suspects are charged under sections 10 and 11 of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 2010, and Section 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Azhar Yousaf, lawyer for the suspects, said their clients had remained in the FIA custody for nine days and that there was no need to further remand them to the agency’s custody and therefore, the recovery of more items used in transplants was not required/

He said the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 2010, was applicable to Punjab and not to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The lawyer also wondered why an FIA team from Multan had been probing the matter instead of one from Peshawar.

Saeed Khan, lawyer for one of the suspects, said the FIA team was bound by the law to show what improvement it had made in the case when the earlier custody of the suspects was granted to them.

He added that there was no noteworthy progress on part of the agency and there was no need for further remand of the suspects.

According to the FIA, the illegal hospital, where the raid was conduct, belonged to drug inspector Mohammad Tayyab, Dr Saifullah Afridi and ring leader of the group Zafar, who belongs to Punjab and is allegedly involved in illegal transplants in different parts of the country.

The alleged kidney donor, Mohammad Babar, a resident of Nankana Sahib in Punjab, told the FIA team that he had sold his kidney for Rs150,000, while kidney recipient Samiullah, who is an Afghan national, said he had purchased the same for Rs1.6 million.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2017