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The way they run business

Emran Hossain with Kongkon KARMAKER, back from Joypurhat
Tariq Azam was astonished when over 50 people responded to his newspaper ad
seeking a kidney for his dying cousin. He needed only one and got it for Tk 2.5 lakh. It gave Tariq, who has a masters' degree in management, the idea that this could be a great business. By the time his cousin's transplant was over, he had outlined a business plan.
“The response was huge and the idea struck me instantly,” said Tariq, who soon established a syndicate with educated but unemployed people who throng hospitals after coming across newspaper ads.
In just five years since 2006, the business blossomed with the flourishing of private hospitals, involving huge profits, until police busted Tariq's syndicate in September 2011.
Legally, organs cannot be transplanted unless the donor is a close kin of the recipient or someone graciously donates his or her organs prior to his or her death. Buying and selling organs are punishable offences.
Interviews of five suspects, of a group of eight arrested in connection with organ trade in Joypurhat, revealed how the gang
started off on a business that lured around 100 people of Joypurhat alone into selling their organs.
Initially the syndicate targeted dialysis centres at public and private hospitals to find buyers through establishing good relations with the hospital employees, from guards to lab technicians.
“Soon a lot of people began calling me," said Tariq, who claimed to have received between Tk 10,000 and Tk 20,000 from each buyer as the middleman in the transaction.
People who sold their organs told police that once the transplant surgery was done, Tariq never gave them the money he had earlier promised. For instance, Shaharul Islam, a resident of Bherendi in Joypurhat, received Tk 1.45 lakh against a promisedTk2 lakh.
Tariq was a shrewd operator. He convinced people who sold their organs to join his gang to collect more people willing to sell their organs. In some cases, they quit their jobs in Dhaka and went to different parts of the
country to work as brokers for the syndicate, luring people in remote villages.
One of those arrested, Sattar of Bahuti in Joypurhat, is such a broker.
Immediately after selling his kidney in 2006 through the syndicate, he quit his job in Dhaka and returned to his village to work as a broker.
He became a security guard for a local madrasa and began persuading the unemployed as well as people weighed down by debt of micro-credit into selling their kidneys.
Sattar was very successful and people began selling organs through the syndicate. The first few, like Mostafa, Akter and Mokarram, also became organ brokers themselves.
Sometimes people were tricked into the business when the syndicate took advantage of their difficult situations. Mahmud Sujan, another arrestee and a graduate, sold his kidney thro ugh Tariq for money required to treat his pregnant wife.
Even though the syndicate made aTk 1.25 lakh deal for his kidney, Tariq gave
Sujan Tk 1.15 lakh in instalments and gradually lured him into working for him.
Sujan's job was to take organ “donors” to private hospitals to have various tests done on them for the transplant surgery.
A newspaper ad in 2006 also lured Saiful Islam alias Daud, second-in-command at Tariq's syndicate and another arrestee, to a hospital to sell his kidney.
Unemployed and unpaid for three months by his previous employer, Saiful had no alternative. He joined the syndicate instantly and began visiting hospitals, mainly Birdem, to collect “donors”, pocketing between Tk 10,000 and Tk 20,000 for every successful sale.
The syndicate grew fast. Ads containing addresses to contact for purchasing organs were pasted on the walls of public and private hospitals, so much so that even rickshaw pullers in the capital began selling kidneys.
Tariq and Sattar obtained bail from High Court two weeks back.