The Hindu : Front Page : Kidney racket busted; five arrested

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Tuesday, Sep 02, 2008
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Kidney racket busted; five arrested

Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD: An inter-State kidney transplantation racket, involving exchange of lakhs of rupees, was busted with the arrest of five persons by city police on Monday.

Investigation was on to ascertain the role of eight city corporate hospitals, where the accused got kidneys transplanted for 23 persons while falsely claiming the donors as their relatives and family members of recipients, Commissioner’s Task Force DCP V.B. Kamalasan Reddy told a press conference.

The donors were mostly from Khammam, W.G. and R.R. districts. As per the A.P. Transplantations of Human Organs Act, an Authorisation Committee comprising the Director of Medical Education as its chairman should authorise donation of kidneys by persons other than family members of recipients.

The gang used to go around hospitals identifying patients undergoing dialysis for renal failure. They would offer to arrange kidney donors and ‘take care of all documentation’. They had collected money ranging from Rs. 1.20 lakh to Rs. 1.75 lakh and retained Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1.25 lakh as commission. They would create fake documents projecting donors as distant relatives of recipients with no commercial interest and present the same to the Committee. They secured permissions for 14 persons in this manner. With the committee strictly scrutinising applications, the accused began claiming donors as even blood relatives of recipients.

Under the second category, applications would be accepted at hospital level but the donors were sent for the test of Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) to determine compatibility and linkage with the patient. If the HLA test report was negative, the accused used to scan the report copy, edit it suitably in the computer, take a fresh print-out and present it in the hospital.

Two of the kidney transplantations were performed in Chennai and the remaining in Hyderabad. Among the arrested persons were, A. Srinivas and T. Pitchaiah, who sold their kidneys earlier, D. Sudarshan, B. Sai Kumar, a dubbing artiste and E. Jayaram Reddy.

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