Gurgaon, Jan 25 (IANS) Five people arrested from this Haryana town on the outskirts of the national capital for allegedly luring poor men from Uttar Pradesh and illegally selling their kidneys used to cater to patients from Nepal, Lebanon, Dubai and Greece, police officials said Friday.
Policemen from Gurgaon and Uttar Pradesh Thursday night arrested five people, including a doctor, during a raid at a private hospital here.
Gurgaon police commissioner Mahender Lal said the doctor, identified as Upendra Kumar, had been running the private hospital from a house in Sector 23 here for the past three years.
The alleged mastermind of the racket, a surgeon called Amit Kumar, and two other doctors, Jeevan Kumar and Saraj, are absconding.
The police also raided a large house at DLF City in Gurgaon that the doctors used as a guesthouse for kidney buyers coming from other countries. Four Greek nationals and a NRI couple from Britain found there have been detained for questioning.
Police officials said two of the four people from Greece were to undergo kidney transplants.
All the doctors are from Faridabad in Haryana and Upendra Kumar reportedly owns a private hospital there as well.
“Preliminary investigations have revealed that the doctors sold between 400 to 500 kidneys in the last six to seven years. They used to remove the kidneys from poor labourers and pay them between Rs.50,000 and 100,000. Then they used to sell these to buyers for between Rs.1 and 1.5 million,” Lal said.
Raids were also conducted at several places in Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh.
The racket in illegal sale of human organs came to light after a few labourers from Moradabad town in Uttar Pradesh told the police that an agent had been going there regularly and taking four to five men with him for the last few months.
“We investigated the complaint and found out about the racket,” Moradabad Additional Superintendent of Police Manjul Saini said.
Police officials who conducted the raid in Gurgaon said five victims, all of them from western Uttar Pradesh, were found at the private hospital.
“We found three victims at the hospital whose kidneys had been removed by doctors. Two others had not yet been operated upon,” Lal said.
Those involved in the racket used to lure labourers from Uttar Pradesh, especially from Meerut and Moradabad, offering to help them get jobs. These victims used to be taken to Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, adjoining Delhi, and then brought to Gurgaon for surgery to remove their kidneys.
“I was brought here after being told that I would be given a job,” one of the victims told IANS. “Then I was taken to the hospital and told that I would have to undergo a medical examination as per government rules before I can be employed.
“But at night someone came to me and said my kidney would be removed and I would be paid Rs.50,000 for it. I was told I would be killed if I refused to undergo the operation.”
The doctors had put up a board with the names of advocates J.K. Sud and Jitender Kasana outside the house in which they were running the operation. There was no board to indicate that it was a private nursing home.
Sawapan Jana, a 27-year-old newspaper vendor, said: “I have been supplying newspapers here for the past 12 years but never came to know about the activities inside the building. But I used to often see foreigners here.”
Wing Commander M.M. Marwah, a Sector 23 resident, said: “It is a shocking news for all Gurgaon residents. Our residents welfare association (RWA) was not aware of any such thing going on inside the building.”