The Hindu : New Delhi News : More to kidney racket than meets the eye

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 17, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

More to kidney racket than meets the eye

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 16. The prime accused in the kidney racket smashed recently by the New Delhi police has been identified as the grandson of a former Member of Parliament from Muzaffarpur in Bihar. While a hunt is still on to nab the accused, it is learnt that the police have established some more cases of illegal kidney transplant at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi.

Investigations so far have revealed that the racket -- spread across Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal -- was being run by Sanjay Singh, grandson of Shiv Charan Singh, the former MP from Muzaffarpur. Earlier the police had arrested three of his alleged accomplices, two of whom were identified as Sanjay and Mukesh. They revealed that so far they had got more than 50 people operated upon for illegal kidney transplant.

At their instance, police teams were sent to Muzaffarpur and other nearby places to arrest Sanjay Singh. During interrogation, the three accused revealed that Sanjay Singh himself used to strike deals with the hospital staff members for luring patients needing kidney transplant. According to them, he had built contacts with three staff members, V.K. Prasad, Rajpal and Neelambar, of Research and Referral Hospital here in New Delhi.

According to the complainant in the case, Kishore Kumar, he was also operated upon in Research and Referral Hospital this February under fictitious name Jagdish. It is learnt that apart from his case, the police have established some more cases of illegal kidney transplants in that hospital. They have sent a notice to the hospital authorities to produce all the relevant documents for further probe.

Since investigations revealed that the racket involved at least four hospitals outside Delhi, two in Mumbai, one each in Pune and Jaipur, the New Delhi police are now restricting themselves to probing into illegal kidney transplants carried out only in Delhi hospitals. They are also trying to identify the victims of this racket.

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