The Delhi Police busted an inter-state illegal kidney transplant racket in multiple hospitals across 5 states by arresting 15 members including the kingpin of the operation.

In an investigation by the Delhi Police’s Crime Branch (Inter-state cell) about a well-organized racket, which is involved in illegal kidney transplants of Indian citizens, a lady complainant gave a complaint against two people, namely Sandeep Arya and Vijay Kumar Kashyap, alias Sumit, that they had cheated her husband with 35 lakhs on the pretext of kidney transplant.

During interrogation, it was revealed that in an organised manner accused persons first used to take jobs in reputed hospitals as transplant co-coordinator and then get trained and learn the process adopted by the concerned hospital for Kidney transplant.

Later Sandeep, who is resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Noida was the kingpin of this Racket and had an MBA degree in Public Health. Explaining his role, DCP Crime Branch Amit Goel said, “He worked as Transplant Co-ordinator in various hospitals in Faridabad, Delhi, Gurugram, Indore and Vadodara. He used to contact patients and arrange kidney transplant in hospitals, where he had been posted as transplant coordinator.”

Sandeep earned seven to eight lakhs from each surgery for which he used to charge about 35 to 40 lakhs for each kidney transplant, which included hospital expenses paid by patients, arrangement of donor, accommodation and other legal documentation required for surgery.  “He is previously involved in a credit card cheating case of Police Station Shalimar Bagh,” the DCP added.

Further, he had a network of people that helped him in this crime. Among the six others involved, Rohit Khanna alias Narendra  Rohit, resident of Delhi, who used to get the contact numbers of kidney donors through the social media platforms from various kidney groups in which he is a member. “As soon as any donor showed his willingness to give the kidney, he provided his mobile number and used to contact them. Further, he forwarded them to Sandeep for various patients for kidney transplant. He has 26 email IDs, numbers of social media pages and is also a member of 112 kidney treatment groups. He is the main supplier of donors to the syndicate,” the DCP said, adding that during the investigations, they recovered 34 Fake Stamps, 17 mobile phones, two laptops, nine SIMs, one luxury Car, 1.5 lakhs , forged documents and files of recipients and donors recovered.

The main accused’s brother-in-law Devender Jha, resident of Uttrakhand, used to assist him and received payments in his direction and took 50,000 rupees as a cut. “He studied upto class 10th and is brother-in-law of Sandeep Arya who provided his account to him, in which 7 lakhs were received from the husband of complainant,” the DCP said.

He added that accused persons used to contact and arrange donors from social media and took benefit of their poor financial background and exploited them on the pretext of providing five to six lakhs rupees to give their Kidney.

“They prepared the forged documents of patients /donors to show them close relative as this is one of the mandatory provision. In some cases, they fabricated documents and showed the donor and patient as resident of other state to get transplantation in different states hospital to avoid any doubt.

Based on forged documents, they had their preliminary medical examination and arranged to pass the scrutiny of the Transplant Authorization Committee in different hospitals. So far, it has been revealed that the syndicate had succeeded in Kidney Transplant in 11 hospitals in different states,” he said.