Kamran
PAKISTAN’S illegal organ trade has once exposed a brutal truth: where poverty, weak oversight and medical malpractice meet, vulnerable people can be turned into commodities.
Recent raids and arrests show that this trade is not a relic of the past. It remains a criminal economy operating in neighbourhoods, private clinics and weakly regulated spaces. Organ trafficking in Pakistan has evolved beyond hidden backstreet deals. Investigators have linked recent operations to organized networks involving brokers, medical professionals and facilitators, with transplant activity allegedly carried out through forged paperwork, bypassed approvals and carefully structured financial arrangements. In June 2026, the FIA’s Anti-Corruption Circle arrested two suspected recruiters accused of targeting brick kiln workers, daily wage labourers and other poor people for unlawful kidney transplants. The operation followed earlier action in Islamabad, where the same investigation had already led to the arrests of a doctor and members of his medical team. Officials said the network may have handled around 187 illegal kidney transplants. Recipients were allegedly charged between $21,500 (PKR 6 million) and $36,000 (PKR 10 million) for each procedure, while donors received only a small fraction of the money. These figures reveal the harsh imbalance at the heart of the trade: the affluent pay for survival, while the poor risk their health for money.
On 25 June 2026, the FIA arrested five suspects, including three Chinese nationals and two Pakistanis, in Islamabad over alleged illegal trade in human organs. Officials said the raid uncovered stocks of fresh, dried and processed human placenta, which investigators believe had been collected from hospitals in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore. The placenta was allegedly mislabelled and shipped abroad as sheep organs, with Vietnam identified as a destination. The case widened the picture of the trade. It was not limited to kidney harvesting or local transplant scams, but also involved the alleged collection, processing and export of human biological material through hospital-linked channels. This detail shows how adaptable the market becomes when demand, profit and weak enforcement meet.
At the centre of Pakistan’s organ trade is the exploitation of vulnerability. Investigations have repeatedly pointed to brick kiln workers, daily wage labourers and other distressed people as a recruitment pool. Brokers approach men already trapped by debt, insecurity or household pressure and turn their desperation into a marketable organ. A 2023 BBC report on a major organ trafficking ring in Pakistan described how the kidneys of more than 300 people were allegedly harvested and sold to wealthy clients. The same report noted that at least three people died after having organs removed in this way, highlighting the physical cost of illegal transplants. The case remains a reminder that such crimes are recurring.
Pakistan outlawed the commercial trade of human organs in 2010 and the law carries prison terms and fines. Yet the continued pace of raids and arrests shows that legislation alone has not been enough to extinguish the market. The gap between statute and enforcement is most visible in the repeated nature of these cases. In February 2026, Rawalpindi police added offences under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act to a kidnapping case after a man alleged that his friend had been abducted for an illegal kidney transplant. In May 2026, police in Lahore’s Mangamandi area arrested six people over alleged organ trafficking and kidney sales. Each case reinforces the same pattern: the law exists, but the trade adapts faster than the state. Another damaging feature is the reported involvement of medically trained professionals. The June FIA case named a doctor and members of his team, while earlier reports from Pakistan and international outlets have also linked organ trafficking to medical insiders. Their involvement gives the trade an appearance of legitimacy, allowing unlawful procedures to move through clinics, operating theatres and falsified records rather than only through criminal backchannels. A 2023 Dawn editorial on transplant tourism had already described a Lahore racket allegedly run from Dubai by senior Pakistani doctors, operating from an upscale housing area and charging overseas patients large sums in foreign currency. That report showed how the trade can hide inside respectable medical settings while serving rich recipients and exploiting poor donors. The current cases suggest the same logic remains intact, with new routes, brokers and cross-border links.
Organ trafficking in Pakistan is not only a domestic crime; it feeds international demand. The June Islamabad case involving the alleged export of placenta to Vietnam illustrates the transnational character of the trade. Earlier reporting on transplant tourism also pointed to foreign patients travelling to Pakistan specifically to obtain organs through illegal arrangements. That cross-border dimension brings together local facilitators, foreign recipients, cash payments and falsified health documentation. The trade follows profit wherever oversight is weakest. When the clientele spans multiple countries, the supply chain stretches beyond one jurisdiction, making the abuse harder to detect and interrupt. Pakistan’s current problem is therefore not the absence of headline arrests. It is the lack of durable suppression after each raid. The June FIA operations show active policing, but show enforcement arriving after a crime has matured into an organized network. Officials describe these actions as part of a wider crackdown, yet previous busts have not stopped the trade from resurfacing. That persistence has given the organ market a grim resilience. The poor are still being approached as donors, the rich as clients and medical intermediaries as profit-taking gatekeepers. The result is a criminal economy surviving on delay, weak oversight and the willingness to look the other way.
—The writer is contributing columnist.
