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Cases of quacks and fake doctors in Pakistan is nothing new, where non-professional medical workers try their best to send victims into disarray, by extracting their vital organs and selling them in the hidden, dark market.
Four members of a gang were arrested by Hafizabad police, after the scandal of extracting and selling young girls’ bone-marrow and spinal fluid had come out in the open. It all started after the father of a 17-year-old girl told the police that men had collected a sample from their daughter, after claiming that they were employees of a hospital and that the sample was necessary, as a part of a routine checkup.
The gang operates in a weirdly hysterical way, where different men marry young girls and then extract their spinal fluid samples. The other aspect of the ordeal is that these members pretend to be from a local hospital and say that samples are necessary for a government scheme, known as the dowry assistance package.
When the man’s daughter returned home, she felt extremely weak. The father then went to the police and filed an FIR against the culprits and informed them about the ‘medical test’ the men had taken.
“Gang members pretended to be from the DHQ hospital. The gang consists of three males and a female. We were informed by the victim’s father of her sample being taken on the promise of a dowry package being provided under a government scheme,” informed the SHO Hafizabad.
The accused have confessed to extracting spinal fluid, stating that they were promised money in return. “We were promised Rs. 40,000 if we provided 15 samples, however, we could only get 12,” one of the arrested informed the media. The scam seems to be bigger than just these four men and it is being alleged the bureaucrats and local politicians might be involved in the heinous activity as well.
After the reports became public, Chief Minister Punjab Mian Shehbaz Sharif took immediate notice of the incident and said that the victims should be provided with the best medical treatment available and the culprits be brought to the book as soon as possible. The CM also summoned DPO Hafizabad and asked him to submit an inquiry report.
Different scams and vices in Punjab are nothing new. Previously, there have been gangs that steal kidneys and other organs and sell them on the black market, along with the ever-so-famous Kasur child pornography case, where over 200 victims still await justice.
