After 500 kidneys sold, Mysore police bust racket

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MYSORE, JANUARY 18: Twelve persons have been arrested. And with it, a flourishing racket has been exposed. Some 500 kidneys of the poor have been sold to the affluent within and across the border.

With Mandya police successfully busting this racket, the well-knit array of players who benefited from this have also been exposed.

On the one hand are the rich and influential recipients and on the other, the gullible poor, who have played right into the hands of touts for a few thousands of rupees.

The gang is said to have supplied kidneys to recipients in major hospital chains in Bangalore.

SP Mandya Amarkumar Panday said that around 40 persons from Holalu village had sold their kidneys for Rs 30,000-40,000. However, the touts earned Rs 50,000 per kidney.

Sources say that one of the recipients, Azaruddin, is related to a Minister in the state Cabinet. The organ was arranged through Dodamara Shetty through fake records created to establish that the police verification procedure was completed.

A tout is said to have approached Shetty at Holalu and promised him money in exchange of the kidney. As the recipient was a relative of the Minister, the Human Organ Transplantation Committee which has to monitor the donation of organs, did not take notice of the police objection.

According to police, the racket came to light when a fake record prepared by the group, landed in a rural police station. They conducted an inquiry which led to the arrest of 12 persons, including Daddiah, Yusaf, Kasim, Ravi, Afzar, Lakshmipathi, Rajashekar, Balu and Lakshmi.

Kasim and Yusaf were already arrested once in 1994 as the main accused in the 1994 organ racket case.

The donors, according to police, were from Holalu village in Mandya and Salem, Hosur and Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. Three of the accused are yet to be arrested, says Amarkumar Panday.

Shivamoriah, who acted as the middleman for Azaruddin, committed suicide when he realised that the police dragnet was closing in on him.

The police claimed that the racketeers were operating with the connivance of hi-tech hospital staff in Bangalore. Police are also looking into the role played by lab technician Ramachandra of M.S. Ramaiah hospital, Bangalore.

They have also implicated the hospital staff of M.S. Ramaiah hospital, Apollo and Mallya hospitals.

However, Mallya hospital authorities have refuted the charges claiming that all transplantations were performed after securing the authorisation of the chairman of the Human Organ Transplantation Committee.