However, all this time, Dr Baruah has remained busy; not in the operation theatre but at the keyboard. Determined to clear his name and resurrect his reputation with his yet-to-be-published book, Pig-heart Transplantation Vs Conspiracy, Dr Baruah is now looking for a publisher. But the laborious alibi full of medicalese contains hardly anything that has not been reported already.

Dr Baruah says the book -- in which he accuses Chief Minister P.K. Mahanta and minister Kamala Kanta of conspiring against him, arresting him and damaging his reputation -- had to bewritten because he was not allowed to speak. However, except his claims, the book carries little evidence to prove Dr Baruah's innocence or genius. And truth remains muzzled. Pig-heart Transplantation Vs Conspiracy begins with a chapter on xenotransplantation followed by his version of what happened in the Saikia case.

On January 1, 1997, Dr Baruah claimed to have successfully transplanted a pig heart and lung into Saikia's body and said the patient survived for seven days after that. However, following Saikia's death, the police and members of the medical fraternity accused Dr Baruah of malpractice and of violating the Transplantation Act. Following an FIR, a court sentenced him to 45 days' imprisonment. He was accused of fraud and of transplanting the pig organs into Saikia after his death. It was alleged that his institute had no facilities for open-heart surgery.

While all this is known, the ``untold'' part of Dr Baruah's manuscript begins in 1905, when Alexis Carrel performed the first hearttransplant at the University of Chicago on dogs.

Dr Baruah goes on to list experiments with animal organs by doctors all over the world, with the survival time in the cases varying from two to 24 hours after the operation, and then takes credit for the maximum seven-day survival. However, there is nothing to prove that Saikia did actually survive following the transplantation or that the transplantations were not carried post-mortem. There is also no explanation why no one was allowed to view the path-breaking operation, why nobody was allowed to see the patient for those seven days and why no photographs and videotapes have ever been shown.

Forty-eight-year old Dr Baruah, an MBBS from Dibrugarh, trained in cardiac surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. After putting in a few years of practice at the London Chest Hospital and Karlonska Institute, Sweden, he set up a cardiac centre in Abu Dabi in 1985. And later, took time out to invent artificial biological heart valves and, what he calls,`Baruah 21', ``a permanently implantable biological heart''.

In one of the chapters, `Xenotransplantation in our Institute', Dr Baruah says the heart-lung transplantations from pigs to human at his institute were carried out after 11 years of ``painstaking research and experiments''. What follows is an experiment-by-experiment progress regarding pigs, monkeys and goats. The explanation in medical jargon means little to non-medics. What is clear, however, is that details of all his laboratory experiments and their success are known only to Dr Baruah.

The crucial chapter, `Clinical Xenotransplantations Performed on January 1, 1997', begins with the medical history of Saikia, who was first brought to Dr Baruah in November 1995. Saikia suffered from ventral septal defect and high pulmonary vascular resistance with left to rig shunt. Dr Baruah says he suggested a heart-lung transplantation using a pig, since a human donor would be hard to find.

A year after his first visit, Saikia returned to Dr Baruah'sinstitute. And on December 15, 1996, the doctor performed a minor operation on Saikia. However, the latter's condition did not improve and Dr Baruah told Saikia's relatives that he was not going to make it. ``His brother insisted that the pig heart-lung transplantation be undertaken,'' Dr Baruah claims. Again, the book does not explain why Saikia's condition worsened after the first operation.

On December 31, 1996, writes Dr Baruah, after collecting 12 units of blood and ``sacrificing'' 12 pigs, he began the operation. Saikia's organs were removed and pig kidney, heart and lung were transplanted into him. Till January 3, the doctor claims, Saikia did well. ``However, later next day, his condition started deteriorating. His chest was reopened to facilitate transplantation of liver, pancreas and small intestine.'' This time the donor was reportedly a 20-kg pig. Two days later, on January 7, Saikia was declared dead. And three days later, Dr Baruah was arrested.

In the ensuing drama with the police andhealth officials, Dr Baruah claims, all the evidence -- ``Saikia's explanted organs, case history, X-rays, laboratory data, videotapes, slides, photographs'' -- was taken away and never returned.

Questioning the grounds on which he was arrested, Dr Baruah says: ``The Transplantation Act restricts the removal, storage and transplantation of human organs and does not apply to the recipient. Xenotransplantation is an entirely different issue and no law was ever made anywhere nor can any law be enacted to regulate xenotransplantation.''

Throughout the book, Dr Baruah lashes out at doctors for failing to recognise his genius and at the administration and police for ``victimising'' him. He blames them for the fire at his hospital and the snapping of his telephone connection, and flays the ban on him conducting any experiments. Dr Baruah also claims he has suffered a loss of Rs 3,820 crore as a result of the controversy.

In the book, with the help of careful placements and omissions, Dr Baruah tries to buildthe case of a victimised genius. Of a dedicated doctor-scientist who the world has failed to understand and recognise.

While there is little to prove mala fide intention on Dr Baruah's part, the feeling one increasingly gets as the book nears the end is of an obsessive doctor puncturing and cutting up animals in the isolation of his laboratory, removing and replacing organs, determined and desperate for another experiment -- on a human.