[Assam] From NY Times/ India and Kidneys

[Chan Mahanta]

Kidney Thefts Shock India

(But does it really?  cm )


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By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
Published: January 30, 2008

GURGAON, India - As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed 
recalled, he felt an acute pain in his lower left abdomen. Fighting 
drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green 
medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with 
surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney 
had been removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were 
removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, 
supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials 
say. A few hours after his surgery last Thursday, the police raided 
the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up 
from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped 
private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo surgery. 
Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who 
were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent 
years, the police believe the scale of this one was unprecedented. 
Four doctors, 5 nurses, 20 paramedics, 3 private hospitals, 10 
pathology clinics and 5 diagnostic centers were involved, said the 
police officer in charge of the investigation, Mohinder Lal.

"We suspect around 400 or 500 kidney transplants were done by these 
doctors over the last nine years," said Mr. Lal, who is the Gurgaon 
police commissioner.

The case has enthralled India's newspaper-reading public. Editorial 
writers have been particularly incensed by the failure of the police 
to capture the main doctor, who has many names but was known most 
recently as Amit Kumar.

He was arrested in 1994 for running a kidney-transplant racket in 
Mumbai, but jumped bail, changed his name and set up work again from 
a series of clinics hidden inside residential apartments in the 
prosperous city of Gurgaon, just outside Delhi.

One of his clinics was raided by the police in 2000, but somehow he 
was allowed to continue working. Officials neglected to investigate 
further even when at least one television investigation exposed his 
work.

The Times of India on Tuesday called on the government to investigate 
"the nexus between the organ traders and the police."

Investigators were alerted to the existence of the ring on Thursday 
by a donor who said the operation had ruined his health.

Apparently tipped off before the raid took place, Dr. Kumar escaped 
arrest. Only one of the four main doctors implicated has been 
detained.

The officials suspect that several private hospitals in Delhi and its 
suburbs were quietly complicit in Dr. Kumar's work and treated 
patients recovering from kidney transplants.

"Due to its scale, we believe more members of the Delhi medical 
fraternity must have been aware of what was going on," Mr. Lal told 
reporters on Monday.

He said a team of criminals he called kidney scouts usually roamed 
the labor markets Delhi and cities in Uttar Pradesh, India's poorest 
state, searching for potential donors. Some prospects were asked 
outright if they wanted to sell a kidney and were offered $1,000 to 
$2,500.

A car equipped with testing equipment was often on hand so that 
potential donors could be checked immediately to see whether their 
kidneys matched the needs of prospective patients.

Letters and e-mails from 48 foreigners inquiring about transplants 
were discovered in Dr. Kumar's office, Mr. Lal said. Five foreigners 
- three from Greece and two Indian-born American citizens - were 
found in one of the clinics during the raids. The police suspected 
that they may have been about to receive kidney transplants, Mr. Lal 
said, but they were later allowed to return home because there was 
insufficient evidence to detain them.

Mr. Mohammed, 25, said in an interview on Monday that he had no idea 
that it was possible to sell a kidney. He had been picking up odd 
jobs in Delhi for the past two years and sending money to his family 
in Gujarat. Two weeks ago, he said, he was approached by a bearded 
man as he waited at the early-morning labor market by the Old Delhi 
train station. The man offered him an unusually generous deal: one 
and a half months' work painting, for a little less than $4 a day, 
with free food and lodging.

He said he was driven four or five hours away, to a secluded bungalow 
surrounded by trees, where he was placed in a room with four other 
young men, under the watch of two armed guards.

"When I asked why I had been locked inside, the guards slapped me and 
said they would shoot me if I asked any more questions," Mr. Mohammed 
recalled, lying in his hospital bed, wrapped in an orange blanket, 
clenching his teeth and shutting his eyes in pain. He said the men 
were given food to cook for themselves and periodically nurses would 
come to take blood samples.

One by one, he said, they were taken away for surgery.

"They told us not to speak to each other or we would pay with our 
lives," he said. "I was the last one to be taken."

Two beds away in the drafty isolation ward at the Gurgaon Civic 
hospital, Shakeel Ahmed, 28, a laborer from Uttar Pradesh, said he, 
too, had been promised well-paid work. After several days of 
confinement with Mr. Mohammed, he said, a blood sample was taken and 
a few hours later, against his will, he received an injection that 
caused him to lose consciousness.

"I had no idea about kidney transplants, but when they made me lie 
down on the stretcher, I was terrified," he said. "I knew that these 
people meant to do evil to me. When I woke up a doctor said my kidney 
had been removed. He said I would be shot if I ever told anyone what 
happened."

The men said there were no postoperative medical checks and no 
discussion of money or other compensation.

Three police officers now stood guarding the ward.

"These are the main witnesses to the crime," said Badlu Ram, a police 
inspector. "The operation was so well-organized that we believe there 
may be a threat to their lives."

Mr. Ahmed's father, Abdullah Ahmed, sat on the edge of his son's bed, 
weeping. He said that his son's damaged health would keep him from 
working, leaving the family destitute.

"I don't know what we will do," he said. "The men who did this should 
be hanged."

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Delhi.