THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And those who sell organs for transplant are none too fussy about where those parts come from. And given the profits to be made from fresh young organs, some dealers are not the least bit deterred by legal niceties or penalties in their hunt for new sources.

Five days after his kidnapping, the body of 6-year-old Harun-ur-Rashid was discovered dumped in wetlands near Sirajganj, north of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. The child’s kidneys were cut out — a victim of the country’s black market organ trade.

After Harun disappeared from the village of Tebaria on April 22, the boy’s father, Abdul Hannan, feared the worst and contacted authorities.

One arrested suspect told police Harun was drugged before being taken under a bridge where three waiting men had arrived from Dhaka. The suspect said a surgeon performed the operation on the spot, according to local media reports.

“Five days later [police] called to say they had found his body near another village,” Abdul Hannan recounted. “I went to collect him and could see where they had cut into his back.”...

The people of Tebaria live in the crushing poverty of rural Bangladesh and in fear of local banditry. Some described lawlessness — accentuated by ineffective and corrupt local authorities — and said 15 local children were killed the same way as Harun in the past year. Dhaka's police department did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s a very dangerous situation here, and we can’t trust the people who do these crimes will face justice. Nothing will happen to the kidnappers,” said Kulshed Alom, a member of a local community watch program...

The Bangladeshi judiciary is rife with nepotism and embezzlement and lacks independence, according to U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, a Norwegian research body. This has allowed the black market trade in human organs to flourish, according to Monir Moniruzzaman, an anthropology professor at Michigan State University who has spent the past 12 years researching the trade’s commodification and exploitation of poor Bangladeshis.

In addition to people being kidnapped and their organs stolen, some willingly sell their organs on the black market through local brokers who contact regional and national syndicates to facilitate medical procedures and find buyers for kidneys and livers. Desperation, combined with a lack of law enforcement, enables brokers to entice impoverished Bangladeshis with offers of easy money.

People so desperate they will sell parts of their bodies are not enough to supply the trade, so they get them where they can.