MOYNA, SOBHANA K, SMITHA NAIR & SANJAY SINGH

GURGAON, MUMBAI, LUCKNOW, JANUARY 25: 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.

His middlemen would lure poor labourers and to avoid any delay, Dr Amit Kumar would test their blood group in his mobile lab. The donors would then be taken to the house, equipped with an operation theatre, where patients would be waiting for the transplant.

The police have identified four doctors involved and have arrested one of them, Dr Upendra Agrawal, a general physician who owns a Ballabgarh hospital. He was held along with his driver Jagdeesh, who doubled up as a middle-man.

Agrawal has been taken to Moradabad by the UP Police for further investigations as the complaint was filed by a victim there. The other accused, apart from Dr Raut alias Amit Kumar, are Dr Jeevan Kumar, the surgeon who carried out the operations and Dr Saraj Kumar, a Shahadra resident and anaesthetist.

Agrawal and Amit Kumar met when Agrawal’s sister- in-law required a kidney transplant. “Following the operation, the duo seems to have begun working together,” said DCP Rakesh Arya, in charge of the investigations in Gurgaon. Gurgaon’s Commissioner of Police Mohinder Lal, said: “We are not sure whether the operations were carried out under pressure or threats and are investigating the matter.” He added that the donors were given between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1 lakh.

It was a fight over money between a middleman and the donor that finally blew the lid off the scandal. The donor, Vidya Prakash Jatav alias Pappu, lodged a case with Civil Line police station of Moradabad, saying Dr Agrawal and his associates forced him to undergo an operation in Guragaon. He said he came to know that his kidney was removed and sold. Jatav told the police that when he protested, he was told that his life was not precious. Jatav, who used to be a labourer in Gurgaon, is now back in Moradabad.

The UP police have also arrested three agents_Pappu, Noushad and Ghiasuddeen who supplied donors for the transplant racket. The police also found five foreign nationals at the DLF premises of Dr Amit Kumar. Among them are Joy (53), an Indian American of Kerala origin and Heleni Kitcocy (53), a Greek national, both of whom are undergoing treatment at Delhi’s Apollo Hospital. Joy was with his wife Sonam while Kitcocy was accompanied by two relatives.

The police said while daily wage workers were the target of the racket, clients came from the US, UK, Greece, Canada and Saudi Arabia. “We found several requests at the DLF apartment owned by Dr Amit from recipients in several foreign countries,” Commissioner Lal said.

The relatives of the recipients have been detained for questioning. “We are still trying to find out how the gang used to get in touch with the foreign nationals,” Lal added. Moradabad SSP Prem Prakash said that Agrawal was recently in Canada. “He returned from Canada only two weeks ago,” he said. Sources said an advocate of Indian origin based in Greece helped Dr Amit Kumar get his clients.

editor@expressindia.com