LAHORE: A joint team of the Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) on Thursday raided a private hospital in Ravi Road area of the city, arresting three suspects for allegedly conducting illegal renal transplants.

However, the owner of the Shama Hospital and some other staffers managed to escape during the raid. The hospital was sealed on the PHC orders.

Official sources say that the hospital owner, Dr Hashim, ran the facility, along with his wife, Dr Farkhanda Hashim.

An official privy to the information told Dawn the raiding team also found two patients and a donor brought there for illegal kidney transplant. They were immediately shifted to the Services Hospital Lahore for treatment, he added.

He says that involvement of an elaborate network behind the illegal kidney transplant scam is being suspected.

The official says that no record of any illegal transplant procedure was found at the hospital as, according to sources, its management used to remove the documents and other evidence to avoid action by the regulatory authorities concerned.

He says that investigators are trying to identify the surgeons who would carry out illegal renal transplants in the hospital and the exact number of the operations performed there.

“During investigations, we found out that the owner of the hospital, Hashim, is a retired veterinarian”, FIA Director Sarfraz Khan Virk told Dawn.

He says that the staffers arrested during the raid have confessed that they were involved in total 10 kidney transplant procedures, and of these eight were arranged by an agent, Shahzad.

The FIA director says two of these illegal procedures have been performed at the hospital that was raided.

He says that FIA is also trying to know whether the surgeons involved in the scam are government employees or work for private hospitals.

Mr Virk says the arrested hospital employees are being interrogated to find out other members of the network.

Meanwhile, a PHC spokesperson says the Commission received information from the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) that illegal kidney transplants were being carried out in the Shama Hospital.

“The preliminary investigation indicate that neither surgeons, nor staff of the hospital were qualified”, the PHC spokesperson says.

He says an operation theatre assistant of the Mian Munshi Hospital, Ali Akbar, would allegedly arrange the team for kidney transplants conducted in the private hospital.The FIA and the PHOTA are investigating the case separately.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2024