Police in the Indian capital Delhi said they have uncovered a racket involving 50 illegal kidney transplants, reports said on Saturday.
The scam was revealed when a 24-year-old construction worker went to police alleging his kidney had been removed without his knowledge. It had been transplanted and given to a soldier’s wife in the main military hospital in Delhi, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Police arrested three people who have reportedly confessed to involvement in 50 similar illegal transplants.
In all cases, the donors were poor people lured to hospitals by money offered for donating blood. In some cases, they were impoverished patients who had been promised free medical treatment.
Some of them were aware that they would be selling their organs while most were unsuspecting, the police said.
The police said two more victims, whose kidneys had been removed, had been found in Delhi.
The operations were carried out in four top hospitals in the Indian capital and one in the western state of Gujarat.
The gang charged between $1 700 and $2 700, New Delhi’s district commissioner of police Anita Roy said. A search was underway for five other members of the gang, including the ringleader, she added.
She said the extent of doctors’ involvement at the four hospitals was being investigated. Counselling the donor prior to transplanting an organ is mandatory under India’s 1994 Human Organs Transplant Act.
Buying and selling of human organs is a criminal offence under the Act. – Sapa-DPA