The Kidney Conspiracy

At least Gurvinder Singh, alias Goldy, is at home. His wife Sunita claims Goldy, who made noserings for a living, was ‘‘kidnapped’’ four months ago, and kept in captivity for two months before being rendered unconscious and relieved of his kidney. ‘‘He managed to escape from the Kakkar Hospital after the operation,’’ she says. In the ramshackle tenement Goldy and his family call home, there is little scope for the post-operative care he has missed out on.

Raju and Goldy are just two of the hundreds of victims of the kidney scam allegedly masterminded by Dr P K Sareen, nephro-surgeon at Kakkar Hospital, and Dr O P Mahajan, principal of Government Medical College, Amritsar, who reportedly cleared illegal transplants as chairman of the authorisation committee. According to the Special Investigation Team constituted by Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh last month, at least 300 labourers have lost their kidneys — and 20-25 their lives — to the racket since 2001.

Significantly though, the first complaints against Dr Sareen were made way back in 1995, but the police took little or no notice of them. It was a good five years later that the authorities sat up to ‘‘take cognisance’’ of the case. Even the SIT’s ambit has been limited to post-2001 cases. Vijay Pratap, when asked if the police were under pressure from senior officers to go easy on the case, refuses to commit himself.

The Punjab Human Rights Organisation, however, has alleged that the SIT’s scope had been restricted only to the past year because ‘‘any probe into the previous years could expose some bigwigs’’. Incidentally, it was the PHRO that first highlighted how the police had ignored an affidavit filed by one Gurdial Singh on June 6, 2000, saying that he had been tempted to sell his kidney for Rs 5 lakh, but had been paid only Rs 45,000.

A PHRO panel later reported to its chairman Justice (retd) A S Bains that even when the police filed its first FIRs in the case, it mentioned only the donors and brought them to book, while the recipients went scot free. The PHRO also accuses the police of selective amnesia: it went public with certain mobile numbers belonging to donors and middlemen, while suppressing some numbers said to belong to police officials.

For the moment, though, the police would rather revel in its success. ‘‘It was a well-oiled operation, with a network of middlemen like advocate Rajan Puri, Yogesh Kumar ‘Tinku’ and the Mumbai-based Vicky Bhatia,’’ says SIT head IGP S K Sharma. ‘‘They bought kidneys for a song and liaised with private hospitals all over the country and even abroad.’’

According to Serbjeet Singh, principal investigator of the Punjab Human Rights Organisation, certain hospitals all over India referred kidney patients to Amritsar, promising that a transplant would cost just Rs 5 lakh there, against Rs 10 lakh in New Delhi. ‘‘Compared to the 1,922 transplants that took place in Amritsar since 2000, Delhi saw only 650 cases in the same period,’’ says Serbjeet.

The returns were huge. Sharma says even though the Transplant of Human Organs

Act, 1994, requires a donor’s medical care-costs to be borne by the recipient for three months after the transplant, the donor-labourers were discharged within seven days of the operation. ‘‘There was a hefty pay-off for every service,’’ he says. A false affidavit cost Rs 10,000, while a kidney could cost between Rs 2-10 lakh, depending on the urgency. The authorisation committee headed by Mahajan allegedly made its bit on a per-case basis, while Dr Sareen himself reportedly pocketed Rs 75,000 for every transplant, over and above his official fee. Even the middlemen made a cool Rs 25,000 per case. The only losers were the donors, who were promised lakhs and given a paltry Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000.

Many, like Raju, didn’t get a penny. A labourer at Chandni Chowk, Delhi, the 23-year-old was picked up by Tinku, who promised to pay him Rs 50,000 for his kidney. ‘‘I had no clue that it was illegal. Besides, Tinku assured me that a person could survive on one kidney,’’ says Raju, who thought he would use this sum to start a small business.

According to Sharma, Tinku was ‘‘inspired’’ by one Chuni Lal, a tea-stall owner, who was making money hand-over-fist by extracting blood from migrant labourers in exchange of Rs 10 and a glass of milk. Correctly gauging the extent of their desperation, Tinku began taking them to Dr Sareen.

Presented in local court on Friday, Dr Sareen denied any wrongdoing. ‘‘I am merely a surgeon. It is the authorisation committee that clears a case for transplant. Before that, it’s the middlemen who approach the recipients. Where do I come in all this?’’

For the moment, though, the police seems to be building up their case against him almost single-mindedly. The SIT team that raided his private clinic seized 103 blank certificates, each stating that no monetary transaction had taken place in the kidney transplant. ‘‘We were asked to sign on blank papers,’’ says Vijay Kumar from Bihar, who is now in jail. A worker with a tent house in Delhi, he was straining to make ends meet when he was approached by Puri and two others.

‘‘They offered me a job in Amritsar with wages of Rs 200 a day,’’ he recalls. ‘‘But when I came here, I was given a room near the Jalandhar bypass and paid Rs 100 a day for about a month. When I asked for work, they told me to wait.’’ His long wait ended the day they told him he would have to part with a kidney. ‘‘When I refused, they thrashed me mercilessly,’’ he remembers. ‘‘Soon afterwards, I met Dr Sareen. I begged him to let me go, but he merely said the loss of one kidney wouldn’t kill me. Finally, they took my kidney and gave it to a wealthy man from Gurgaon.’’

Advocate Puri’s promise to compensate him with Rs 1 lakh proved false. ‘‘Post-operation when I approached him, he threatened to hand me over to the police,’’ says Vijay.

Ravi Kumar, another donor now in jail, says fear led him — and many others like him — to tell the police that no monetary transactions had taken place. Raju, for instance, certified in writing that he had donated his kidney after reading an advertisement in a Hindi daily.

Other than intimidation, say the police, the doctors covered their tracks by demanding VIP recommendations from the recipients. ‘‘This ensured that if there was trouble, the involvement of the MPs, MLAs and other VIPs would slow down the police,’’ says Serbjeet.

Though the strategy certainly seems to have worked for some time, many of the guarantors now dissociate themselves with the kidney racket. For instance, Delhi MLA Jaspal Singh apparently recommended the transfer of a kidney from one Rishipal to Rajouri Garden resident Kuku Anand ‘‘whom I have known for the last 25 years’’. But Jaspal Singh now flatly denies knowing either Anand or Rishipal, who his letter describes as ‘‘employed with Anand for 10 years’’.

If the MLA would like to believe he was in no way involved with the case, so must many others. For all the public-spiritedness the authorities demonstrate now, many questions refuse to be swept under the carpet. Going by the PHRO figures, for three-odd years, one city in Punjab saw one kidney transplant a day. No one — no government monitoring agency, no hospital authority, no medical body — saw or reported anything amiss. The dice may be loaded against Sareen, but he certainly wasn’t in this on his own.

(with inputs from Vikas Kahol)