Pakistani police announced on Friday that they had dismantled a network of human organ traffickers, finding the trace of a 14-year-old boy who had been missing for several weeks and left for dead after having one of his kidneys removed.
The traffickers lured their young and vulnerable victims by promising them lucrative jobs, before removing certain organs - mainly kidneys - which they sold for a price of up to 900,000 rupees (3,600 euros).
Clandestine operations
"
It was only after we tracked him down that we found out that an organ trafficking operation was behind the boy's disappearance
," Rehan Anjum, a spokesman for the police, told AFP. Punjab province police (central east).
"
The boy told us that when he woke up there was an Arab man on a stretcher next to him, so we think most of the customers are foreigners
," he added, adding that six people had been arrested.
Read also Floods in Pakistan: Macron announces aid of 360 million euros
The victims were taken to a clandestine organ transplant laboratory in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.
This type of clandestine pharmacies in Pakistan generally do not have the medical equipment or the know-how necessary for a transplant, and patients have already died there in the past from complications.
"
I'm just grateful that the police found him in time
," the boy's father told AFP in Lahore, capital of Punjab, where he had disappeared.
The police said they have not yet found the doctors involved in the operation.
Pakistan banned human organ trafficking in 2010, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.