Man 'sold wife's kidney to buy tractor'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Man 'sold wife's kidney to buy tractor'*
By Massoud Ansari in Karachi, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:48am GMT 04/03/2007
A farmer persuaded doctors to remove one of his wife's kidneys so that
he could sell it for money to buy a tractor, she has told police.
Safia Thaheem Bibi discovered the organ was missing only when she sought
treatment for an unrelated complaint.
She told Pakistani police that she confronted her husband who confessed
he had used the 70,000 rupees (about £600) he got for the kidney to buy
a second-hand tractor for his rice fields.
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The sale of organs in Pakistan is unregulated, and thousands of people
offer kidneys for sale every year.
Many hospital owners have agents, often working in villages, who try to
persuade needy people to sell their organs. In this case, the
22-year-old woman married Shakeel Ahmed in 2004, in a village near
Bahawalpur in southern Punjab.
Three months later, she was admitted to hospital. In a statement to
police, she said she had been beaten and had suffered a miscarriage, and
that her husband had used the opportunity to have one of her kidneys
removed.
"Given that I became sick, he took me to the hospital in Bahawalpur on
the pretext of my treatment, where I was told that I had to be operated
on," she said. "I did not know that they had removed my right kidney."
She said it was only when she later contracted an infection and sought
medical treatment that she was told the organ was missing.
"I pointed this out to my husband, who then confessed to me what had
transpired, admitting that he had sold my kidney and used the money from
the transaction to buy a tractor," said Miss Bibi.
She told her parents, who called a local jirga, or council of elders. He
confessed to them, she said. "The jirga asked him to apologise to me and
did not order any punishment to him. We did not agree to the decision
and went to the police to lodge a criminal case against my husband."
A new tractor would have set Ahmed back about £5,000, so instead he is
alleged to have invested in a second-hand machine - a valuable commodity
in a region where a farmer can earn up to £250 a month hiring it out.
Initial investigations proved that one of Miss Bibi's kidneys was
missing, but police say it is too early to determine whether she was
beaten before the miscarriage, or whether any assault took place so that
she could be taken to the hospital for her kidney to be removed.
"The case is still at the investigation level. We need to carry out more
medical tests - first of all to ascertain if her kidney was removed
after her marriage or before," said Arif Nawaz of Bahawalpur police.
He said officers would be able to find out from hospital records about
the doctors who had carried out her operation when she was taken for
treatment.
Ahmed is currently on bail in connection with the case, along with a
number of his relatives. All insist they are innocent. If convicted of
having the kidney removed unlawfully, they face a maximum sentence of 10
years in prison.
The sale of organs is a lucrative business in Pakistan. In some
villages, most able-bodied adults have sold a kidney. Youngsters are
taken to hospitals at the age of 16 to be registered, and once their
tissue matches a potential recipient, they can be called in to have a
kidney removed.
Many hospitals openly advertise their services on the internet. "We are
pioneers in this field and have already served thousands of people since
2000," one advert reads. "Our reputation has given us the honour to
serve the international clients from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, West Indies,
UK, US in the field of kidney transplant."
Transplant specialists estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 live
kidneys are sold in Pakistan every year.