By Devirupa Mitra, IANS
New Delhi : A group of Nepalese policeman hunting for the mastermind of India’s massive kidney scam had no trouble in nabbing him – he was sitting in his room, the door unlocked.
The policemen in uniform and in plainclothes, who breezed into the two-storey Hotel Wildlife Camp Safari Resort in Sauraha, bordering the Royal Chitwan National Park, were startled to realize that their quarry was just a floor up.
The hotel receptionist promptly identified Amit Kumar alias Santosh Rameshwar Raut from the photograph shown by the police and pointed them out to room number six on the first floor.
Inside the room, “doctor” Amit Kumar, who was on the run since Jan 24 after police raided his properties in Gurgaon near New Delhi and Moradabad and accused him of 600 illegal kidney transplants, was relaxing and not even bothered to lock the door.
Startled to see the police, he tried to bribe them – something he has already done at least once in New Delhi.
“He told the policemen in Hindi: ‘Take all the money and leave me’,” a hotel employee told IANS by telephone.
But, the police had none of it.
He was taken into custody, but his Nepali associate Manish Singh escaped. Hotel employees could not confirm how he left the premises.
“He (Amit Kumar) also said, why have you got a police car, you should have got a hospital van,” the staff member said, indicating the Indian scamster was trying to feign illness.
Nepal’s Minister of State for Home Ram Kumar Chaudhary later told a private Indian television news channel that Amit Kumar was caught with a large amount of foreign currency.
According to the employee, the two men came to the hotel with a red-tiled roof at 7 a.m. Thursday. “They said that they had come from a nearby hotel and were not satisfied with its facilities,” he said.
The cause of their dissatisfaction with their previous accommodation was the lack of a TV set. “He told us that they changed the hotel because he wanted to see TV. We show all the Indian TV channels in our rooms,” he said.
The check-in register was signed in the name of Manish Singh, who gave his address in Kathmandu district. They had two pieces of luggage with them, a red and a black suitcase.
They were allotted room number six, which is on the upper floor of the two-storey hotel that has 24 rooms. After they retired to their rooms, they ordered for two cups of black coffee. “They did not have lunch at our hotel, but went out,” he said.
The two men returned to the hotel at about four in the afternoon. “The police came in the hotel at about five p.m.,” he said.