Karnataka   

Kidney racket accused give names of private hospitals

BANGALORE: The kidney trade racket busted by the Nelamangala police in Bangalore Rural district on Sunday appears to be an inter-State one.

Sources in the police told The Hindu on Monday that the three men arrested in connection with the racket have claimed that some of the cash-for-kidney transplants were done at hospitals in Pune in Maharashtra.

Though the accused have named some private hospitals in Bangalore, including one in Srinagar and another on Airport Road, it has to be verified whether the transplantations were done in violation of the Human Organs Transplantation Act, 1994, the sources said.

The documents that were seized from the accused were apparently fabricated at the Bangalore North taluk office in Yelahanka. The three men arrested, Mahadeva, Mohan Kumar and Ravi, are touts and the “kingpins” have to be arrested to unearth the details of the racket, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the jurisdictional court on Monday remanded the accused in police custody till August 17.

Superintendent of Police, Bangalore Rural district, K. Sreenivasa, said the case would be transferred to the Bangalore City police. The Nelamangala police have registered a case under Section 19 of the Human Organs Transplantation Act, he said.

Spokespersons for some of the hospitals that were named by the accused have, however, said that they only performed transplants cleared by the Authorisation Committee.

Authorities at the K.R. Hospital claimed that it [hospital] had done only 15 kidney transplants since June 2003 of which seven were related and eight were unrelated transplants. “We have no role to play in the approval of the unrelated transplants. All of them were cleared by the Authorisation Committee. The hospital also has a nine-member Ethics Committee which scrutinises all applications for renal transplants, both related and unrelated,” T.R. Hariprasad, managing director of the hospital, said.

Manipal Hospital authorities also put the onus of giving a cleaning chit to applicants for renal transplants on the Authorisation Committee.

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