[R-G] Kidney Thefts Shock India

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

This is what liberal democracy looks like in the Third World. -- Yoshie

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/asia/30kidney.html>
January 30, 2008
Kidney Thefts Shock India
By AMELIA GENTLEMAN

GURGAON, India — As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he
felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting
drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical
gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical
tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been
removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were
removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation,
supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials
said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided
the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up
from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped
private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations.
Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were
persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent
years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four
doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10
pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder
Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.

"We suspect around 400 or 500 kidney transplants were done by these
doctors over the last nine years," said Mr. Lal, the Gurgaon police
commissioner.

The case has enthralled India's newspapers. Editorial writers have
been particularly incensed by the failure of the police to capture the
main doctor, who has many names but was known most recently as Amit
Kumar.

He was arrested in 1994 on suspicion of running a kidney transplant
racket in Mumbai, but jumped bail, changed his name and set up work
again from several clinics hidden in residential apartments in
Gurgaon, a prosperous city outside Delhi.

The police raided one of his clinics in 2000, but somehow he was
allowed to continue working. Officials neglected to investigate
further even after at least one television investigation exposed his
work.

On Tuesday, The Times of India called on the government to investigate
"the nexus between the organ traders and the police."

Investigators were alerted to the ring on Thursday by a donor who said
the operation had ruined his health.

Apparently tipped off to the raid, Dr. Kumar escaped arrest. Only one
of the four main doctors implicated has been detained.

The officials suspect that several private hospitals in Delhi and its
suburbs were quietly complicit in Dr. Kumar's work and treated
patients recovering from kidney transplants.

"Due to its scale, we believe more members of the Delhi medical
fraternity must have been aware of what was going on," Mr. Lal told
reporters on Monday.

He said a team of criminals he called kidney scouts usually roamed
labor markets in Delhi and cities in Uttar Pradesh, one of India's
poorest states, searching for potential donors. Some prospects were
asked outright if they wanted to sell a kidney and were offered $1,000
to $2,500.

A car equipped with testing equipment was often on hand so that
potential donors could be checked immediately to see whether their
kidneys matched the needs of prospective patients.

Letters and e-mail messages from 48 foreigners inquiring about
transplants were discovered in Dr. Kumar's office, Mr. Lal said. Five
foreigners — three from Greece and two Indian-born American citizens —
were found in one of the clinics during the raids. The police
suspected that they were about to receive kidney transplants, Mr. Lal
said, but they were allowed to return home because the evidence was
insufficient to detain them.

Mr. Mohammed, 25, said Monday that he had no idea that it was possible
to sell a kidney. He had been picking up odd jobs in Delhi for the
past two years and sending money to his family in Gujarat, he said.

Two weeks ago, he was approached by a bearded man as he waited at the
early-morning labor market by the Old Delhi train station, he said.
The man offered him an unusually generous deal: one and a half months'
work painting, for a little less than $4 a day, with free food and
lodging.

Mr. Mohammed said he was driven four or five hours, to a secluded
bungalow, where he was placed in a room with four other young men,
under the watch of two armed guards.

"When I asked why I had been locked inside, the guards slapped me and
said they would shoot me if I asked any more questions," Mr. Mohammed
said, lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in an orange blanket, clenching
his teeth and shutting his eyes in pain. He said the men were given
food to cook and periodically nurses would take blood samples.

One by one, he said, they were taken away for operations.

"They told us not to speak to each other or we would pay with our
lives," he said. "I was the last one to be taken."

Nearby in the drafty isolation ward at the Gurgaon Civic hospital,
Shakeel Ahmed, 28, a laborer from Uttar Pradesh, said he, too, had
been promised well-paid work. After days of confinement with Mr.
Mohammed, Mr. Ahmed said, a blood sample was taken and a few hours
later, against his will, he received an injection and lost
consciousness.

"I had no idea about kidney transplants, but when they made me lie
down on the stretcher, I was terrified," he said. "I knew that these
people meant to do evil to me. When I woke up, a doctor said my kidney
had been removed. He said I would be shot if I ever told anyone what
happened."

The men said that they received no postoperative medical checks and
that money or other compensation was not discussed.

Three police officers guard the ward.

"These are the main witnesses to the crime," said Badlu Ram, a police
inspector. "The operation was so well organized that we believe there
may be a threat to their lives."

Mr. Ahmed's father, Abdullah Ahmed, sat on the edge of his son's bed,
weeping. The father said his son's damaged health would keep him from
working, leaving the family destitute.

"I don't know what we will do," he said. "The men who did this should
be hanged."

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Delhi.


--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>