By Mizan Rahman/Dhaka

Detectives in a drive arrested five suspected members of an organised group of international human organ traffickers from different parts of the Bangladesh capital on Friday night.
The arrested were identified as Abdul Jalil, Sheikh Zakir alias Aziz alias Shakir, Ashiqur Rahman alias Jebin, Fazle Rabbi, and Zihan Rahman.
Briefing reporters at the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) headquarters, Joint Commissioner (DB) Monirul Islam said a team of DB police, led by Assistant Commissioner Mahmuda Afroz Lucky conducted separate drives in the Bangla Academy and Gabtoli areas of the city and arrested them at night.
 The DB team also recovered two injections, one syringe, one dagger and one towel from their possessions, Monirul Islam said.
Abdul Jalil, a suspected agent of international human organ traffickers, brought a man, Abu Hasan, to Dhaka from Joypurhat district for the illegal business on Friday night. On a tip-off, the DB team arrested Abdul Jalil from the city’s Gabtali area at night and rescued Hasan.
Hasan informed DB that Jalil brought him there for buying a CNG-run autorickshaw for him in exchange for his kidney, the DB official said.
According to information given by Jalil, plainclothes police later arrested  four other members -- Shakir, Jebin, Fazle Rabbi, and Zihan -- from Bangla Academy area near the Dhaka University campus.
The team also rescued another victim, Mahbubur Rahman Shanto. During preliminary interrogation, the accused reportedly revealed that they brought Shanto telling him that he will be given 20,000 taka ($250) for donating blood, Monirul said.
 They also confessed that they had planned to sell Shanto’s kidneys to international human organ traffickers at 400,000 taka ($ 5,000), and then kill him and dump his body in the Buriganga River, Monirul added.
Police sources said yesterday Bangladesh is an important organ bazaar that has been in existence for more than a decade. It is being operated by local and international patients, who buy organ within Bangladesh and then conduct the surgery mostly in India, as well as in Bangladesh, Thailand and Singapore. The sellers are poor citizens, who  sell their body parts to get out of poverty.
In 1999, Bangladeshi parliament passed the Organ Transplant Act, which explicitly states that anyone violating the law could be imprisoned for a minimum of three years to a maximum of seven years, and/or penalised with a minimum fine of 300,000 taka ($ 3,750). Nonetheless, the organ trade is growing in Bangladesh. Police sources said, many wealthy recipients buy organs from the market, as they do not want to put their family members at risk. Typically, they hide their kidney shopping, saying publicly that they are unable to match tissues with family members, or their families are unwilling to donate their organs.
However, no recipient has ever been prosecuted for their illegal dealings.

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