Kidney racket busted in India has Global outreach
But with the arrest of the alleged kingpin of, T Rajkumar Rao, it has now become evident that the racket goes beyond just Apollo Hospital. Rao is believed to have been running the racket in several countries including India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia. Within India, he was allegedly operating the illegal trade in almost every major state.
It is reported that he has conned at least 15,000 poor people, to build a business valued at Rs. 75 crore enabling him to buy properties in several big cities. The entire operation was more than just about Apollo, and Rajkumar himself has confessed to having supplied kidneys to 15 other hospitals in the country.
Just recently, a Ugandan man alleged that his kidney was removed without consent at a hospital run by Fortis healthcare in Bengaluru. Earlier this year, a kidney racket was busted in Gujarat and the investigation found that many patients were taken to Sri Lanka for illegal organ donation.
An investigation in 2015 showed the global reach of the illegal trade. The illegal trade rests on the nexus between middlemen, personal staff of doctors and lawyers, and it is people from poorer socio-economic background who are victims of the trade.
The investigation has shown so far that the cheats were able to subvert the laws of organ transplant by creating fake documentation, and this comes from corruption in the state administration. For example, a fake passport of an illegal donor from Sri Lanka cannot be verified by the hospital in question, it has to be stopped at the source, at the passport office where the fake is being made.
Further, there are serious policy loopholes. For instance, the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act of 2011 allows persons unrelated to patients to donate organs out of “love and affection”. This has been used by illegal traders to transplant organs from illegal donors to patients in return for money.
Even in the present scenario, the kidney racket is spread across the country and even involves neighboring countries. A police team from Srilanka has arrived in India to investigate an international kidney racket, which was first unearthed in January this year by the Nalgonda police. As per investigations the police had identified that four Colombo-based hospitals had performed about 60 illegal transplantations for Indian recipients.
In most of these cases, reputed hospitals and doctors have suffered irreparable damage to their reputation and credibility on account of these rackets. Most often, it is seen that kingpins of the rackets are medical representatives who enjoy a close relationship with hospital administration and doctors, which helps them to win the trust of Hospitals and potential kidney donors and perpetuate the organ trade racket.
