New Delhi: The Delhi Police have busted an inter-state kidney racket and arrested the alleged kingpin among 15 gang members. So far, police have confirmed 34 illegal kidney transplants across 11 hospitals but found no evidence yet of the involvement of any hospitals.
The racket was active in Delhi-NCR, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, said the police. The modus operandi of the gang members was picking out vulnerable patients using their hospital connections, targeting financially weak people on social media to make them donate their kidneys for a paltry sum, and arranging for illegal kidney transplants by forging documents to show patients and donors as related, the police added.
A Crime Branch team received information about the racket last month in June and identified a woman while tracking the victims. The woman said she was cheated of Rs 3.5 lakh by two men — Sumit alias Vjay Kashyap and Sandeep Arya — on the promise of a kidney transplant.
Subsequently, beteween 26 June and 28 June, Sumit was arrested from Noida and Arya, along with another accused, Devender, was arrested from Goa. Arya, the police said, is the kingpin of the racket and earlier worked as a transplant coordinator at various hospitals in Faridabad, Delhi, Gurugram, Indore, and Vadodara.
Arya, the police added, used to contact patients and arrange kidney transplants in hospitals where he had worked as a transplant coordinator. He used to take nearly Rs 35-40 lakh from patients for a kidney transplant. The money, police said, covered hospital expenses paid by a patient, as well as the arrangement of the donor, accommodation and other legal documentation the patient required for the surgery.
The police investigation has revealed that Arya alone would earn Rs 7 to 8 lakh for each kidney transplant, while the remaining money went to the other accused. These include transplant coordinators, who had access to case files and kidney donors at different hospitals, and those who benefited from the racket.
The investigation was conducted under the overall supervision of Inspector Satendra Mohan and ACP Ramesh Chander Lamba.
5 patients, 2 donors identified
Police have recovered incriminatory material from the accused — including stamps, seals of different authorities and blank papers of various hospitals and laboratories, as well as forged paper files of patients and donors of kidney transplantation and other important forged identity documents.
“During interrogation, it was revealed the accused had first taken jobs in reputed hospitals as transplant coordinators and learnt the process of kidney transplants. After that, they would identify the patients suffering from kidney ailments and undergoing treatment at different hospitals in Delhi, Faridabad, Mohali, Panchkula, Agra, Indore and Gujarat,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Amit Goel said.
“The accused would contact and arrange donors from social media, where, taking advantage of poor financial backgrounds, the accused exploited people on the pretext of providing Rs 5 to 6 lakh for their kidney,” the DCP said.
The accused, the police said, forged documents of the patients and donors to show that they are relatives — a mandatory provision.
In other cases, the probe found that the accused would fabricate documents and show the donor and patient as residents of states they did not live in to get transplants done at the hospitals in those states to avoid any detection.
“Based on the forged documents, they got the preliminary medical examination (of the patients done) and arranged (for them) to pass the scrutiny of the transplant authorisation committee in different hospitals. So far, the investigation has revealed that the syndicate succeeded in getting kidney transplants done in 11 hospitals in different states,” DCP Goel said.
Police sources said that so far, they have not found any evidence of the involvement of any hospitals in the racket. “Nearly 11 hospitals have been named as places where surgeries (arranged by the racket) were performed. The investigation to check any involvement of the hospitals is underway,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.
The police have identified five patients who got kidney transplants done with the help of the racket, as well as two donors, and initiated legal action against them.
“So far, 34 cases of illegal kidney transplants have been identified. Further investigation is ongoing,” DCP Goel said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: Missing boy’s body recovered from Jhelum in J&K’s Awantipora, family demands police probe