More than a decade after the Punjab Police unearthed the infamous kidney scam in 2002, Amritsar local court has awarded five-year imprisonment to four persons.

Additional Sessions Judge Sham lal has sentenced Ajay Kumar, Surinder Singh, Tarsem Singh, all hailing from Punjab, and Gurinder Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, to five-year jail term and slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them.  The Court has acquitted two persons — advocate Rajan Puri and Kala Singh — citing lack of evidence against them.

It also declared three accused — Kanpur-resident Rajesh Kumar, Amritsar-resident Vicky Bhatia, and Srinagar-resident Rafiq Mohammed — as absconding. Criminal cases were registered on March 16, 2008, in Amritsar against all accused in connection with preparing fake documents for kidney donors and recipients and for running an illegal kidney racket.

During search operations in the city in 2008, police had arrested six accused from Hussain Pura locality in Amritsar and recoveredseveral fake documents, Government rubber stamps, fake degree certificates and fake ration cards from them. The accused had allegedly lured poor people to donate or sell their kidneys while paying hefty money on the basis of fake documents. They had also prepared fake certificate for minor donors wherein they were shown to be adults.

On November 2, 2013, the Court had awarded eight-year imprisonment to former Police inspector Suresh Kumar from Haryana, and sentenced five doctors to five-year jail term, in connection with the kidney racket. Additional District Session Judge GS Bakshi had held former Government Medical College (GMC) principal Dr OP Mahajan, the then Head of Forensic Department of GMC Dr Jagdish Gargi, Dr SK Grover, Dr HS Bhutani and Dr Rajinder Singh, besides Kumar guilty.

Kumar had allegedly got a kidney transplanted by illegitimate means with the help of the convicted doctors.