PESHAWAR: The Federal Investigation Agency, Peshawar Zone, on Wednesday claimed to have dismantled an illegal kidney transplant network and arrested an accused.

FIA officials said that FIA’s anti-corruption wing, Peshawar zone, busted the inter-provincial network of government hospital officials, senior doctors and illegal donors involved in illegal transplantation of human organs.

They said that the anti-corruption wing was investigating the matter following a complaint by a retired executive engineer of Mardan, Fazle Qadir, who employed the services of Shoaib Afridi, a dialysis technician at Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, and paid him a hefty amount of Rs3.1 million to arrange for the donor, surgeon and other facilities.

He said that Shoaib Afridi was arrested by the officials of Federal Investigation Agency, Peshawar.

He said that during the initial investigation, the accused revealed that many senior surgeons and provincial officials were involved in this network. The accused also told the investigators that he worked as a middleman to arrange donors who were mostly destitute and needy and engaged surgeons who were paid hefty amounts.

The accused has been booked and arrested by FIA’s anti-corruption wing under sections 11/12/13 of Illegal Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA 2010) read with 5 (2) Prevention of Corruption Act.

The anti-corruption wing’s additional director Dr Mian Saeed said that further investigations were being carried out, which would help them arrest and dismantle this network.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2019