The kidney transplant racket busted by the UP and Haryana police on Thursday night in Gurgaon was just the repeat of a 14-year-old story in Mumbai. The mastermind of the racket which carried out 600 kidney transplants, Dr Amit Kumar, is the man Mumbai police have been chasing since 1993. In Mumbai police records, though, his name is Dr Santosh Raut.

In between, the UP police say, he was once arrested in Delhi’s Nizamuddin in 2000.

The police first busted his racket in 1993 in Mumbai when it raided his Kaushalya Nursing Home in Khar. “We are 100 per cent sure that Kumar is the Santosh Raut that the Mumbai crime branch has been chasing for so many years. He is among the biggest players in this illegal trade,” said Rakesh Maria, Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime).

Raut had jumped bail and “shifted his illegal trade to Jaipur, Guntur and Hyderabad,” said Maria.

As many as 11 people, including two nephrologists, were arrested in Mumbai. The racket was similar: kidneys were procured from poor labourers and beggars and touts would scout for international clients. The case led to nationwide outrage and the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994.

But Raut continued to operate, under different names, from Delhi, Guntur, Jaipur and Hyderabad, police claim. He started his Gurgaon operation a year and a half ago, they say. Till Thursday, when a UP police party led by Moradabad ASP Manjula Saini, came armed with a complaint to Gurgaon, he had organised 600 transplants.

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