Kidney racket in Apollo, role of hospital not ruled out
BY Chayanika Nigam4 Jun 2016 5:31 AM IST
Chayanika Nigam4 Jun 2016 5:31 AM IST
Tell-tale signs of the involvement of Indraprastha Apollo Hospital have emerged in a kidney trade racket case, which was exposed by the Delhi Police on Friday. The cops have arrested three touts and two members of the secretarial staff of a senior nephrologist of the hospital. The nephrologist in question Dr Ashok Sarin is reported to be abroad.
The accused have been identified as Aseem Sikdar (37), a resident of West Bengal, Satya Prakash (30), a resident of Kanpur, Devashish Mauli (30), also a resident of West Bengal. The two secretarial staff of nephrologist Dr Ashok Sarin are Aditya Singh (24), who was working as his PS for last 4 years and Shailesh Saxena (31) who was working for last 3 years.
The gang was reportedly active in Delhi since February and so far they had sold at least five kidneys (3 females and 2 males) using fake documents. They all were arrested from Apollo hospital late on Thursday night after a tip off was received by the South-East district police.
Meanwhile, the hospital authorities claimed that the duo were not hospital employees but part of Dr Sarin’s personal staff.
The police are also examining the role of the hospital’s Internal Authorization Committee, which cleared transplant cases. “The committee consists of doctors of the hospital, independent staff and government doctors. Their work is to verify the documents, willingness of the donors and relationship of the donor with recipient. But the committee easily approved fake documents provided by the touts,” said a senior police
official. They were using the original details of the person (with whom the recipient shared the relationship) and swapped their photograph with that of the donor. The poor donors were tutored by the touts to face counseling by the committee.
The donors were kept in hotels in Pahargunj where they were trained. Devashish even made his wife—Maumita donate kidney a month back.
According to sources, they were charging between Rs 25 lakh to 30 lakh from the recipients and were giving only Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh to the donor. “As organ trading is illegal so necessary action will be taken against the recipients as well,” said a police official close to investigation. He further said that during interrogation they disclosed that initially they ran a kidney trade racket in Coimbatore and sold more than 20 kidneys. Further they left the place after they came under police radar. Later, they started the trade in Jalandhar where they operated for a brief period. They recently shifted their base to Delhi.
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