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

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 02, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

New Delhi

New Delhi

More to it than meets the eye

Outdated laws governing organ transplants have encouraged crimes like this, finds out Ashok Kumar

More than a year after the macabre Nithari killings came to light at Noida in Uttar Pradesh, the unearthing of the mammoth kidney transplant racket at Gurgaon in Haryana has once again shaken the nation to its very core.

The similarities between the two incidents go beyond their time of occurrence and scale of operation. In both the cases the victims were poor labourers and homeless migrants who had come to the Capital in search of a livelihood.

Despite fingers being pointed at the police, it is pertinent to ask if there really was a failure on their part. Or would solely blaming the policemen not amount to taking a simplistic view of a complex issue with so many aspects?

“To blame the police will be an over-statement for the simple reason that they are only one of the several law-enforcement agencies and of the various laws that they have to enforce, the focus is more on containing conventional crimes. And these by themselves are so numerous that many crimes not covered by the Indian Penal Code sometimes go unnoticed,” says a senior police officer.

“The present racket was an arrangement of mutual convenience where the donor, the recipient, his relatives and the doctors involved were all reaping its benefits. The donor was being paid for the organ, the recipient was getting a new lease of life, and the doctors were amassing wealth. The transplant racket was not a street crime where the beat constable could interact with the locals and get to know,” he adds.

Also, outdated laws governing organ transplants have only encouraged such crimes. Conservative estimates show that every year over a lakh of people need kidney transplants but only 4,000 manage to get the organ. Even so, the need to amend the law to suit ground realities was not felt. This is not the first kidney racket to be busted in this country yet lessons have not been learnt. Laws that are not able to respond to the needs of the time will not be respected and therefore have to be modified.

“Where was the agency responsible for reviewing and updating the law? It is unfortunate that the agencies which are responsible for making laws and implementing them find an easy scapegoat in the police. Whenever it comes to enforcement, we forget the other agencies and only focus on the police. If the police can take action against quacks, then so can medical associations,” says another officer.

There is another aspect to the issue. The burgeoning population of migrants that comes to the National Capital Region to reap the benefits of rapid growth and development is faceless. This facelessness provides the criminal elements the freedom to explore and experiment which they otherwise cannot. And in a huge country where poverty is widespread, people migrating to the big cities do not have a support system back home. And this anonymity provides the breeding ground for such crimes. This problem exists in most developing countries but more so in one with a huge economic disparity.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi