Amritsar: Where it all began

Much before Gurgaon, Amritsar was the hub of a kidney racket. The trade flourished with the connivance of doctors and officials. Varinder Walia recalls how the ring was busted in 2002

ON January 11, 2003, the Punjab police arrested Dr P.K. Sareen, chief transplant surgeon at the Ram Saran Das Kishori Lal Charitable Trust Hospital in Amritsar, Dr O.P. Mahajan, head of the city’s Government Medical College and head of the Authorisation Committee, and his colleague, Dr Jagdish Gargi. They were the first-ever doctors to be arrested for trading in human organs and are alleged to have been key players in a kidneys-for-cash trade that is believed to have generated over Rs 100 crore since the Transplantation of Human Organs Act began to be enforced in Punjab in 1994.

Here are examples of how the racket operated. Seventeen-year-old Bagicha Singh, a frail Sikh from Jagraon, was picked up by a middleman Baljit Singh, alias Vicci, from the premises of the Golden Temple in 2002. On the pretext of teaching him driving, Baljit Singh took him to the house of Suresh Kumar Sharma, reportedly a police inspector, in Chandigarh.

Baljit Singh lured Bagicha Singh with money for his kidney. When the latter refused, he was threatened with a gun. The poor donor, who was forced to sacrifice his kidney, was even denied the promised money. After a haircut, he became Raju, son of Ajit Kumar, a resident of Link Colony, Jalandhar. The poor donor later died in a road accident under mysterious circumstances. His father Ajit Singh has turned hostile in the court. The police believes that he was lured to retract his statement that his son was forced to donate his kidney in the court.

In the stereotyped affidavits it was mentioned that Raju (Bagicha Singh) has been living with the patient Suresh Kumar Sharma for 10 years as a domestic servant. He has no relative and the offer had been made purely out of "love, affection and humanitarian ground without any consideration." (See box on the Act).

Gurvinder Singh, another resident of Amritsar, was shown as Vijay Kumar, who was "unmarried" (despite the fact he had two kids) and working as a servant of one Ashok Kumar Aggarwal, a resident of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. His kidney was given to Aggarwal. In the affidavits, it was mentioned that "Vijay Kumar" had been living with the patient for nine years as a domestic servant. He too made the offer purely "out of love, affection and humanitarian ground without any consideration". He was operated at Ram Saran Das Kishori Lal Charitable Trust Hospital, Amritsar (popularly known as Kakkar Hospital) by Dr. PK Jain and Dr. PK Sareen.

The Authorisation Committee headed by the then Principal, Government Medical College, cleared the cases immediately. The Chairman and other members of the Authorisation Committee did not bother to verify the antecedents of the donors.

After verification, however, the affidavits were found to be fake. An arrest warrant was issued against an advocate for forging the signature of executive magistrates to facilitate illegal transplantation of kidneys.

It was established that poverty and the lure of easy money pushed many gullible persons to sell their kidneys. In the absence of voluntary donation of organs, an illegal racket to save end-stage renal failure patients flourished due to unscrupulous kidney brokers. The racket thrived under the patronage of transplant specialists who got poor victims to donate their kidneys for an attractive package.

The kidney hunters (middlemen and musclemen) would pick up a large number of victims from railway stations and bus-stands. In many cases, the donors would lose their identity because of the fake name and addresses they would acquire in exchange of easy money. A majority of them landed up in poor health and were kicked out without any penny in their pocket.

Although the Act for transplantation was in place, the loopholes in the rules and regulations were duly circumvented by the racketeers who produced fake documents to prove the donor and the recipients as part of one family. The Act had many safeguards but the money power of the kidney cartel was so immense that they could circumvent the law to carry on with their nefarious activities to benefit the recipients and leave the poor donors in the lurch.

During the peak of the kidney racket in 2003, a number of donors had to suffer at the hands of corrupt doctors who treated them shabbily. A couple of donors died as a result of poor post-operative care.

The racket would not have flourished without the consent of the kidney ransplant Authorisation Committee. The Government Medical College Amritsar earned the dubious distinction due to the involvement of its three principals in the kidney removal cases. Dr O.P. Mahajan, the then Principal, and Dr Jagdish Gargi, the then Professor and head Forensic Medicine (now Principal) were arrested and released on bail for clearing cases of unrelated donors in their capacity as Chairman and member of the Authorisation Committee. Kidney transplantations came to standstill in Amritsar with the arrest of Dr P.K. Sareen and his associates in 2003. Sareen is currently on bail.

He landed in yet another controversy following a complaint, lodged by Prof Kiran Kapoor, a resident of Civil Lines, Ludhiana. In her complaint, she had alleged that Sareen has been involved in kidney transplantation outside Punjab. Sareen has gone underground following the lodging of the complaint. However, proving that despite being underground Sareen was in touch with the patients, just a few days back Kapoor withdrew her complaint.