Kidney Thefts Shock India (But does it really? cm )
Article Tools Sponsored By 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. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
