Man arrested for running kidney racket in MP, son commits suicide

Rajendra Nager, 52, confessed to the police that he along with two Gujarat-based accomplices, Vinod Patel and Girish Soni, ran the racket over the past few years and successfully arranged for 13 donors from Ujjain and Indore.

One kidney was sold for anything between Rs 1.30 lakh and Rs 1.50 lakh. While the donor was given Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000, the racketeers pocketed the remaining amount.

When he came to know of his father’s true colours, 28-year-old Vikas Nager, Rajendra’s only son, hanged himself at his house on Saturday morning.

Sub-Inspector Ajit Tiwari told The Sunday Express that Rajendra himself had sold his kidney for Rs 1.05 lakh in 2003 and was drawn into the racket by the promise of hefty commissions. He lost his wife Manoramabai to a kidney ailment and ran a huge debt on her treatment.

Following his wife’s death in 1999, he claimed to have left Ujjain after being kicked out from a cloth mill where he was working, and lived in Nadiad’s Santram temple. It was there that he came into contact with Soni and Patel. He sold his kidney and returned to Ujjain where he tried to lead a normal life by trying to run a shop.

The Mahakal police seized several police station stamps, municipal corporation documents and school leaving certificates from Rajendra’s room in Ujjain’s Girdhar Hotel on Friday. It was a chance arrest because the police were carrying out routine checks ahead of President Pratibha Patil’s visit to the temple town.

Rajendra admitted he was a resident of Ujjain but fumbled when asked why he was staying in a hotel. When he was interrogated at the Mahakal Police Station, he spilled the beans, though he could not name all the donors.

Besides Rajendra, the Ujjain police have arrested three persons and are looking for others while a team has left for Nadiad to take Soni and Patel into custody. According to Rajendra, the kidneys were transplanted in a hospital each in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Coimbatore and Indore.

Rajendra’s only son Vikas, who had taken to religious activities, left a suicide note before hanging himself by the ceiling fan. SI Tiwari said Vikas felt ashamed by his father’s activities. Friends and relatives of Vikas did not allow Rajendra to attend the funeral.