By Minu Jain, IANS
New Delhi/Kathmandu/Toronto : The wheels began moving simultaneously Friday with alleged mastermind of India’s massive illegal kidney transplant scam Amit Kumar taken to Kathmandu for questioning while a police team from India left for Nepal to seek custody of the man they had been hunting for two weeks.
As the long hands of the law began to close in on the fugitive kingpin of a multi-million-rupee scam that stretched to various countries, four victims whose kidneys were removed were rescued in a critical condition from an apartment in Gurgaon, bordering the capital New Delhi.
And in far away Brampton, the affluent neighbourhood near Toronto, Amit Kumar’s wife and two sons slipped away as news was being flashed that he was arrested from a hotel near the India-Nepal border.
Amit Kumar, alias Santosh Rameshwar Raut, the man allegedly behind 600 illegal kidney transplants, was arrested Thursday evening from picturesque Chitwan in south Nepal.
On Friday, he was charged with violating Nepal’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, an offence which could net the 43-year-old four years in prison and a fine of over Nepali Rs.40 million (approx $630,000).
“He was carrying foreign currency worth nearly Rs.15 million,” said a police official.
A Nepal newspaper reported that he tried to bribe Nepali policemen into letting him go when he was arrested from the Wildlife Lodge.
“Amit Kumar is now in the Hanumandhoka police station for fresh interrogation,” Nepal’s Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Kiran Gautam told IANS.
“He was asked if his name was Amit Kumar and he answered in the affirmative,” he said.
Amit Kumar told the police he had come to Chitwan to explore the possibility of opening a kidney transplant centre there.
Last year, the Nepal police busted three major kidney transplant scams in which the victims were taken to Chennai, Chandigarh and Lucknow with promises of lucrative jobs.
If Amit Kumar is linked to any of them, he will be tried in accordance with Nepal’s laws in the Himalayan state first.
Only after the legal formalities are complete in Nepal is he likely to be handed over to the Indian authorities.
But Indian forces would like to get him quickly.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Vijay Shankar said that efforts would be made for his immediate extradition.
“We have sent a team of officials to Nepal with arrest warrants of Amit and sufficient evidence to be produced before the Nepal court. The team would also seek a joint interrogation of Amit with Nepal police, who has arrested him,” Gurgaon Joint Commissioner of Police Mahender Singh Ahlawat told IANS.
As Amit Kumar was finally nabbed, Gurgaon police raided a flat in the Valley View apartments on the Gurgaon-Faridabad road in the early hours of Friday and rescued four people identified as Dileep, Sayeed, Naresh and Rajender.
Gurgaon Deputy Commissioner of Police Satish Balyan said: “We found the victims in a poor state inside the flats and rushed them immediately to a city hospital. Their condition was stated to be critical.
“Preliminary investigations suggest that their kidneys were removed by Amit at his Sector-23 hospital on Jan 22 (two days before the police raids). The victims told us that they were lured by a Nepali citizen to the hospital on the pretext of providing them a job, but their kidneys were removed forcefully at Amit’s clinic,” Balyan added.
The Valley View flat was hired by a Yashpal Sharma, reportedly Amit Kumar’s chartered accountant, and was raided after one of the victims somehow managed to come out of the flat and approached the police.
In Canada, his wife Poonam Ameet and her two young boys seemed to have fled from their palatial home in Brampton. When an IANS correspondent reached their upscale home at 14 Pali Drive Thursday evening, a woman neighbour said Amit Kumar’s wife “might have gone out with her sons”.
The garage driveway was cleared of snow and there seemed to be fresh tyre marks on it, confirming movement outside the house for the first time in two weeks.
Interpol had last week issued a red corner notice for Kumar’s arrest on charges of “illegal transplanting of kidneys, cheating and criminal conspiracy” after he apparently escaped from India following the unearthing of the racket Jan 24.
According to police sources in India, Kumar has eight properties, including one in Australia and a home in Canada. He was reportedly operating at least a couple of dozen banks accounts, where he had stashed around Rs.1 billion.
“His network was well spread in some foreign countries. Till now, the names of a few people in Turkey, Greece and Ireland he surfaced in the investigations. We are trying to identify them,” a senior police official told IANS.
(With inputs from Sudeshna Sarkar, Sahil Makkar and Gurmukh Singh)