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........

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