The Delhi police arrested five persons, including three touts and two personal staff of doctors at the city’ Indraprastha Apollo Hospital on Friday, in connection with a kidney racket that involved br
The Delhi police arrested five persons, including three touts and two personal staff of doctors at the city’ Indraprastha Apollo Hospital on Friday, in connection with a kidney racket that involved bringing “donors” from different parts of the country to the national capital.
The police is examining the role of the hospital staff, including doctors, in the racket. However, the hospital has distanced itself from the racket, saying it a victim and was not involved in the racket.
“The police in its investigation has identified secretarial staff of some doctors, who have been accused of being involved in the alleged racket. We reiterate that these are not employees of the hospital. While all due precautions were conducted, the use of fake and forged documents was used for this racket with a criminal intent. The hospital has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital,” the Indra-prastha Apollo Hospital said in a statement.
The accused, who had been running the racket for around three years, have been identified as Aseem Sikdar, Satya Prakash alias Ashu, Devashish Moulik, Aditya Singh and Shailesh Saxena, joint commissioner of police (southeast) R.P. Upadhyay said. The accused were remanded to seven-day police custody by a Delhi court.
The police identified Sikdar as the kingpin of the racket and said Satya Prakash and Devashish Moulik, the two private secretaries at the hospital, used to work for him. Shailesh Saxena and Aditya Singh worked as middlemen.
Mr Upadhyay said under the Human Organ Transplant Act, a donor can only transplant his/her organ to a relative. The law adds that the entire process needs to be videographed. “However, we have found cases in which documents of the recipient and the donor were found to be fake,” he said. “The accused used to lure financially weak people from West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country to donate a kidney for Rs 3-4 lakh and were brought to Delhi and accommodated in hotels. Medical tests of the recipient and the donor were conducted and once the compatibility match was done, surgery was conducted at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital,” the officer said. The police said around five cases of kidney donations have come into their probe.
Mr Upadhyay said inspector Maninder Singh got a tip-off about the kidney racket being run in the hospital. He later came to know that the accused inv-olved in the racket would assemble at Apollo Hosp-ital on Thursday night to strike a deal with an unrelated donor and a recipient. Two separate teams were formed and Sikdar, Prakash and Moulik were nabbed after a raid.
The police also nabbed Saxena and Singh along with two women who had come to donate their kidney.
A source claimed that the police got the lead about the racket after a fight involving a man and his wife whose kidney had been sold by the alleged accused without her consent. “Sikdar and his aides used to provide donors. Saxena and Singh used to talk to the patients who needed kidney and would strike a deal with the pat-ients and later approach Sikdar. Prakash and Mou-lik would arrange a meeting with the donors and the middlemen at budget hot-els in Delhi,” the police said. The source added that Sikdar used to demand an advance payment of Rs 25-30 lakh from the recipients.
“Sikdar used to give only Rs 3-4 lakh to the donors. Saxena and Singh were given around Rs 2-3 lakh and he would keep the rest,” the source claimed.
