In Pakistan, Illegal Kidney Trade Flourishes as Victims Await Justice

November 4, 2016

(NPR) – Aizaz Azam is a young police detective in Pakistan whose brief career has been devoted to busting minor prostitution and gambling rackets and sorting out street brawls. Now, though, he’s slogging away for up to 20 hours a day, working his first major case. It involves a crime so ruthless that Azam says he and his fellow cops feel “strangely unsettled in our souls.” They are pursuing a group of wealthy surgeons and their network of agents who lured impoverished and illiterate Pakistanis from the countryside and imprisoned them for weeks with the intention of removing one of their kidneys in order to sell these for huge profits.