Karnataka   

Kidney racket busted in Bangalore

— Photo:V.Sreenivasa Murthy

INQUIRY: Sub-Inspector K. Virupaksha Swamy interrogating five prospective donors who were rescued at Nelamangala police station in Bangalore on Sunday.

Nelamangala (Bangalore Rural district): The Nelamangala police on Sunday raided a house and saved five persons from falling victim to the organ trade. Prakash (24) and Kumar (28) from Magadi, Cariappa (33) from Ramanagaram, Narayana (35) and Nagaraj (35) from Kollegal had gone through two medical tests of the three required for donors in kidney transplant surgery. Narayana was rejected because of his disability.

The main accused, arrested in Ramanagaram, according to the police, is Mahadeva (59) who has been running this racket for the past seven years and has roped in 25 kidney donors so far. His accomplices, Mohan Kumar and Ravi (himself an organ donor), were arrested from Doddabettahalli. According to the police, Mahadeva had evolved a modus operandi in sourcing kidneys and getting the transaction done through the Authorisation Committee, the body set up under the Human Organ Transplant ation Act (1994), to ensure that organ transplants are not performed for commercial considerations.

The police said Mahadeva would create a set of fake documents, namely, the ration card, family tree of donor and recipient, and income certificate. He had identified two persons, Ramu and Duggaiah, in the Nelamangala taluk office to do this for him for Rs. 8,000 per case, the police said.

These persons would authenticate the documents before a magistrate. Then the documents were presented to the Authorisation Committee in Bangalore from where they would be sent for police verification. Before the inspection, Mahadeva would have shifted the potential donors to the locations given in the forged documents, tutor the owner of the house and the neighbours to vouch for the donors, the police said.

The kidney recipient, meanwhile, would also have been tutored and the Authorisation Committee would clear the application. The police said that Mahadeva charged three or four lakh rupees from kidney recipients and give the donor one lakh rupees, the police said.

However, Mahadeva denied this. “I charge Rs. 1.3 lakh from the patients and give the donor Rs. 1.2 lakh,” he told The Hindu. He also said that he did not force anyone to donate their kidneys but that they came voluntaril y to him. Three of the five potential donors are poor farmers and two are silk weavers. They are in debt to moneylenders for sums ranging between Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh. “I did not know what I was getting into. I did not know I had an organ that was worth so much. We needed money desperately because of our loans and that is why we went to him,” Cariappa said. He said that his brother donated his kidney seven years ago.

The racket came to light thanks to Narasimha (26) of Mallasandra. According to the police, he went to the house, where the five prospective donors were lodged, in search of Mahadeva, who he mistakenly assumed was a moneylender. When he learnt that he would have to donate his kidney if he wanted money, he escaped from the house. He filed a complaint on Saturday.

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