Delhi Police has intensified its search for the kidney racket kingpin, even as they served notices to the Apollo Hospital administration to join the probe and provide documents related to transplants in the past few months. Five police teams are conducting raids at Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad for the kingpin, Raju Kumar Rao, who is believed to be in the business for the past few years and connected to similar rackets in Nepal, Sri lanka and Indonesia, a senior official said.
Suspecting the involvement of some senior staffers and even doctors in the racket, Delhi Police has served notices under CrPC sections 90 and 160 to the higher authorities of Apollo Hospital asking them to join probe and provide documents pertaining to kidney transplants carried out in the hospital in the past few months. They will be scrutinised by a 25-member special team set up to crack the entire nexus, the senior official said.
Investigators have also identified at least three recipients and five donors having links with the racket and are considering further legal action.
While two of the donors are women who are presently in hospitals, three recipients are from Kolhapur, Jammu and Ghaziabad.
A police team also visited the address of the Ghaziabad-recipient, but it emerged that he had left that place. Meanwhile, two more prominent private hospitals in the city have come under the police scanner. Police have so far come across five cases of kidney transplants conducted in the city through this racket and during interrogation the accused disclosed about 10-15 more transplants conducted at Jalandhar and Coimbatore in the past two years, an official said.
They used to charge Rs40-50 lakh from the recipients, of which not even 10 per cent reached the donors. Police are also investigating a money trail starting with two bank accounts of one of the arrested persons and believed it can lead them to the kingpin.
With the arrest of five persons, including the personal secretaries of a neurologist in Apollo Hospital, police had unearthed the kidney trading racket. The racket used to lure poor people across several States to sell their kidney off and also hound for people desperately looking out for kidney for transplant.
They allegedly forged documents to establish relationship between the donors and the recipients in order to adhere to the law.
In a statement, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals said, “We are cooperating and providing to them all information required to help them in their investigation. This matter is of grave concern and our teams are extending all support to the police.”
“The hospital, in order to ensure compliance with the law and diligence in process has an independent body with external members also for according consent for any transplant surgery. This Committee goes through all documents necessary to ensure that requirements under the Act are complied with. Further, the hospital has ensured that all due process as per the law has been followed,” the hospital said in the statement.
“The police in their investigation have identified secretarial staff of some doctors, who are not employees of the hospital, who have been involved in the alleged racket.
“While all due precautions were conducted, the use of fake and forged documents was used for this racket with a criminal intent. The hospital has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital.
“We urge the police to take the strictest of action against all those involved,” the hospital authorities said.