The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sunday, February 2, 2003, Chandigarh, India

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KIDNEY SCAM
4 docs booked for murder
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 1
Dr Parveen Kumar Sareen, prime accused, his team of doctors and others were booked under Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC for destroying evidence after the death of kidney donor Sudesh Kumar, who had died after the removal of his kidney.

According to Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh, SP and member of SIT, a case has been registered against Dr Sareen and his aides, Dr Bhupinder Singh Sandhu, Dr Bhushan Aggarwal, Dr P.K. Jain, Mr Kulwinder Singh, a computer operator, and two others for wilful neglect leading to the death of Sudesh Kumar. They were indicted by the SIT for the destruction of the evidence as the body of the donor who was cremated as “unclaimed”. The transplant took place in July 2001 at Ram Saran Dass Kishori Lal Kakkar Charitable Hospital, authorised centre for organ transplant.

Kidney recipient Mulakh Raj Goel, a resident of Mathura who had got his statement recorded in the court that Sudesh died a few days after the transplant surgery.

Dr Sareen reportedly had confessed during his interrogation by the SIT that he had handed over the body of the donor to Vinodh Goel, son of the recipient.

Record of the Kakkar hospital had shown that donor - Sudesh was a domestic servant and stayed with the family for many years but the family had denied it. However, according to the SIT, Sudesh was a migrant labourer who was given meagre amount for losing his organ. Hospital record, seized from Dr Sareen’s clinic, had shown donor Sudesh as having died but later it was cancelled and erased from the register and the donor was shown as discharged from the hospital. The SIT claimed that post-mortem examination or autopsy was conducted on the body of the donor.