Visakahapatnam-based Seven Hills Hospitals director N Prabhakar Babu on Tuesday appeared before the Bhubaneswar Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials here in connection with the sensational kidney sale case in Cuttack district in June last year. Sources said the ED officials quizzed Babu for about two and a half hours and also seized some important documents. On May 30, a three-member ED team had visited Seven Hills Hospitals to investigate last year's alleged kidney sale racket in Cuttack and interrogated some doctors and higher officials of the hospital.
The ED strongly suspects that some doctors of the hospital connived with middlemen to exploit poor people by luring them with money to part with their kidneys at cheap prices, the sources said. Two alleged cases of kidney sale had come to fore in Cuttack last year in the months of April and May and created sensation in the State.
In two separate cases, some middlemen had allegedly lured two women, Padmini Nayak and Namita Nayak of Nayak Sahi in Mangalabag locality of Cuttack city, to part with their kidneys with promises of lucrative amounts of money. However, the two women were not paid the amounts promised to them by the middlemen.