PESHAWAR: The Federal Investigation Agency in a joint raid with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Transplant Regulatory Authority (KPMTRA) arrested a man for running illegal kidney transplant racket in Mardan on Thursday night.

Fayyaz alias Mujahid, an anaesthesia technician at Rural Health Centre, Toru, was taken into custody, while two facilities allegedly used for unlawful renal transplants were sealed, officials said.

According to them, another anaesthesia technician, Ajmad, at the Maulvi Ji Hospital, Peshawar, has already been arrested two months ago in the same case.

“Efforts are on to arrest four members of the racket involved in unlawful transplant, which brought donors from Punjab, who transplanted their kidneys to patients from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” they said.

The racket used a medical facility on Shamsi Road, Mardan, and a rented house on Jail Road for the illegal activities,” the officials said.

The FIA is also investigating another private hospital for alleged involvement in the scam, but the main culprits are Lahore-based doctors, who came to Mardan and went back after performing the transplants, the officials said.

Since the establishment of KPMTRA in Nov 2016 to enforce the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Transplantation Regulatory Authority Act, 2014, several rackets have been unearthed, the officials said. During this period, about 600 renal and over 500 corneal transplants have been carried out in the province.

The KPMTRA headed by Prof Asif Malik, a renal transplant surgeon, has also recognised hospitals for transplants of different organs where the people can undergo procedures with satisfactory result while the illegal transplants are often done by unqualified people and entail complications.

Officials said they were interrogating the people arrested and would reach the main culprit.

KPMTRA has so far arrested more than 100 people, officials said. In most cases, the recipients were rich people from Afghanistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir and other provinces, but the donors happened to be daily wagers.

The so-called transplant surgeons received millions of rupees from the recipients of kidneys, but gave only Rs100,000 to Rs500,000 to the donors, the officials said.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2025