India has the lowest rates of cadaver organ donation and the result is a huge gap between demand and supply, allowing men like Rout to step in to fill the demand by illegal means. The law allows two kinds of donations —donated by blood relatives or by cadaver donations from the ‘brain dead’.

“We have to try very hard with other families and yet we do not succeed. Most refuse on the plea that Hindu mythology does not allow body parts to be taken away. Even if we get a rare success, we feel happy,” said Dr S.C. Sharma, a transplant coordinator at Gangaram Hospital who has had success in six cadaveric donations in the last five years.

The Jains, however, have always been sensitive to the issue. “I had read about organ donation. We had donated eyes of our in-laws,” said Mamta. “When my son was in hospital, we thought if he didn’t make it, at least he can help others live,” said his father Arun, a textile industrialist. The immediate family did not object and the rest did not matter, they say.

“We were amazed to see how little infrastructure was in place to get recipients. There was no centralised list. In fact, we were told that the liver hardened and could not be used before the right person could be flown in from Bangalore,” said Arun. This is when this particular hospital has the infrastructure and the committees in place.

For organ donation, the patient has to be declared “brain dead” by a committee of four doctors on a standard set of parameters. Most hospitals in India do not even have this committee in place. Once a decision to donate organs is made, the heart is kept beating in order to keep the organs flushed.

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