Kidney racket busted in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand

Shocking incidents of arbitrary and illegal selling of Kidneys of the poor in the country has become the order of the day.

Patients with acute kidney problems, needing healthy  kidney transplant, usually come to India from abroad and even rich and affluent Indian patients, with huge financial packages, lure the poor people through kidney racketeers and agents and get themselves treated, which is not legally permitted in their own countries, especially in view of the non-availability of kidney donors. In Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Kolkata and other metropolises of country several high profile kidney rackets involving crores of rupees have been busted by the police authorities with shocking revelations of several high profile doctors, surgeon and hospital authorities of some reputed hospitals, caught under the legal net and send to jails with heavy financial penalties.

These kidney racketeers and organized gangs have also made the rag pickers, poverty stricken drug addicts and the illiterates, their easy prey by retrieving or extracting their kidneys at just pea nut value after intoxicating them with drinks laced with drugs or injecting the drugs into their veins or after amicable settlements exploiting their abject poverty. Just three months ago on 27th May, 2017 the Delhi police has busted a massive kidney racket with high profile connections in which a women with four other accomplices were caught and sentenced to rigorous punishment. Last year in Gujarat too such a high profile kidney racket was busted with international connections.

We have been hearing of these kidney rackets in the metropolises of the country till yet but now the state of Uttarakhand symbolized as the land of abode of Gods is also the victim of such shabby and immoral business in the name of charity. In a shocking revelation the Senior Superintendent of Police, Dehradun, Nivedita Kukreti has in a press conference disclosed about treacherous Kidney racket illegally functioning in Gangotri Charitable hospital, Rishikesh. The proprietor of the hospital and the doctors were involved in this unlawful kidney racket. This kidney racket was internationally connected.

Shame on the management of this private hospital in the name of a charitable institution, which has literally shamed and defamed the noble profession of medical science. No such high profile illegal act of clandestine kidney racketeering involving unaccounted monetary profits can be conducted without the blessings and support of political allegiance. Such high profit minting illegal professions can’t succeed without the alleged patronage of the politicians, muscle men, and the mafias. Such private clinics and hospitals under the garb of exhibiting high profile reputation (not all) manipulate the innocent poor and economically deprived inhabitants of the Uttarakhand hills and befool them to sell their kidneys in extreme cheaper rates to further transplant them in rich patients who pay them handsomely in order to save their precious lives at the cost of the poor donors who are lawfully not supposed to donate their KIDNEY. The SSP of Uttarakhand police and the entire team deserves to be complimented for this noble act and dedication to expose this high profile Kidney racket. It may be recalled that in 2008 a high profile globally connected multi million rupee kidney racket was busted with its tentacles spread over several reputed hospitals of India.

The proprietor surgeon is in Tihar Jail undergoing a sentence of life. In 2016 another largely connected Delhi’s reputed Batra Hospital kidney racket hit the newspaper headlines of the country followed by several other such rackets. The illegal Kidney racket is a flourishing racket in India being a highly profitable business with a single kidney fetching 10 to 15 lakhs or even more in several cases. The poor slum dwellers and people in abject poverty in distant villages of the country are the usual prey who are the soft targets of the professional kidney rackets.

Sunil Negi