By IANS
New Delhi/Kathmandu : Amit Kumar, the alleged mastermind of the illegal kidney transplant racket that has shocked India, was Saturday evening brought here from Kathmandu and will be produced in a court Sunday.
A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team of three officials, headed by a superintendent of police, along with the 43-year-old Ayurvedic doctor, flew back on the Air India flight IC 814 and arrived at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here at about 6.50 p.m. amid tight security and huge media attention.
Amit Kumar alias Santosh Rameshwar Raut was straightaway taken to the CBI headquarters here, where a medical team including a psychiatrist awaited him for a medical check-up.
The CBI will Sunday produce the man nicknamed Doctor Horror – allegedly behind over 600 illegal kidney transplants – before a court and would seek his custody. However, the agency officials remained tight-lipped on whether he would be produced in a court in Gurgaon, Moradabad or Delhi.
“We would seek his custody as his interrogation would provide further lead in the case,” CBI spokesman G. Mohanty said Saturday.
Mohanty said the speedy deportation of Amit Kumar from Nepal was possible due to the agency’s diplomatic ties with Nepal authorities.
The Nepal government had earlier planned to try him in that country for violating local laws and a cabinet meet Sunday was to take a decision but Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala intervened and the decision was changed.
Nepal Police had earlier said Amit Kumar would be produced in a Nepalese court Sunday and charged with violating the Foreign Currency Regulation Act.
The decision to let Indian authorities take Amit Kumar to India has demoralised Nepal Police who feel they lost face by not being allowed to produce him in a court here and try him for violating Nepal’s laws.
The racket came to light Jan 24 when police forces of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana raided his clinic in Gurgaon, near here, but he escaped, allegedly after a tip-off.
He was finally arrested Thursday evening from a hotel near the India-Nepal border and taken to Kathmandu early Friday for interrogation.
India’s premier investigating agency had Friday registered a case against Amit Kumar and his brother Jeewan Kumar and two other key accused identified as Upendra Aggarwal and Saraj Kumar.
Aggarwal was arrested on Jan 24. Jeewan and Saraj are still absconding.
Amit Kumar and his associates allegedly obtained kidneys illegally, often through force, from poor people and then transplanted them to patients who could pay their exorbitant charges.
The ring, which served clients from Britain, the US, Greece, Lebanon, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was busted Jan 24 in Gurgaon, a booming town just across the state border from New Delhi.
Amit Kumar was booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 420 (cheating), 506 (criminal intimidation), 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 342 (wrongfully confining any person) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).
He is also accused under Sections 18 and 19 of the Human Organ Transplant Act, 1994.