A high profile illegal organ transplant case, once again, spotlights how criminality survives in this society. A daughter of famous comedian Omar Sharif died last Monday following illegal kidney transplant carried out by a government hospital surgeon, Dr Fawad Mumtaz. A written complaint by her brother said the doctor had charged the family Rs 3.4 million for the operation and took her to an undisclosed place in AJK where she developed complications and died a week later. Following the complaint, a team of the FIA and Human Organ Transplant Authority (HOTA) raided the house of the culprit, but he had already fled to avoid arrest. As it turns out, he is a serial offender, and getting away, too, without facing any consequences.

A couple of weeks before the latest case, he was arrested by a HOTA team after being nominated as the prime accused for removing a poor carpenter's kidney for an illegal transplant, and handed over to Faisalabad police, but a few days later he walked free. Creditably for it, HOTA did not give up trying to hold him to account. It took up the matter with the city police officer, asking him to take action against the officials who released the doctor. Still nothing happened. HOTA later approached the provincial Inspector General of Police requesting him to take legal action against Dr Fawad for his involvement in four active criminal cases lodged in various parts of the province, including Multan, Faisalabad and Lahore. A press report quoting HOTA director general also points out that the man in question is not even a qualified surgeon for kidney transplants. Yet he has been playing with lives, apparently, secure in the knowledge that he could buy his way out of trouble. It may be recalled that back in 2017 he was arrested by FIA on getting caught red-handed along with general secretary of the Young Doctors Association while performing illegal kidney transplants for some patients from Gulf countries at a secret location in Lahore, charging them six million rupees each. The news had hit media headlines. But he along with accomplices managed to get out on bail to carry on business as usual, emboldening the gang to go on running organ trade. As an official familiar with the activities of these greedy and unscrupulous medical practitioners rightly remarked, the criminal track record of Dr Fawad and the network he had been running to perform illegal organ transplants uninterruptedly is "a slap in the face of faulty criminal justice system."

Hopefully, this case will jolt the government into action. It must see to it that the HOTA law is implemented in letter and spirit. Under it, first time offenders are liable to lose their licenses for a period of three years, and any further crime is to lead to permanent suspension of licenses. And those involved in organ trade are to be punished with a 10-year prison sentence. All such medical practitioners profiting from human suffering must be held to account sooner rather than later.