How the quest began
*A 24-year-old MBA student at Pune’s Symbiosis Institute risked his safety and played along with illegal kidney donation agents for several weeks to expose a well-organised racket operating in Delhi, top police officials said.
* MBA student Jaideep Sharma’s quest began last September when one of his friends suddenly went missing. Since the friend had spoken about selling his kidney for a handsome price, Jaideep believed that his disappearance had something to do with a racket. He, therefore, made a conscious effort to contact the kidney racketeers and offer himself as a donor.
* The racketeers fell into the trap and offered him Rs 4 lakh for donating his kidney.
How the ‘donor’ was prepared
*Sharma contacted a reporter from News 24 channel. Prepared to conduct a sting operation, the news team informed the crime branch and sought backup.
* Sharma played along with the racketeers for several weeks, allowing the police to gather evidence. His kidney was to be ‘donated to a patient from Andhra Pradesh.
* In the meantime, the racketeers made Sharma assume the identity of an Andhra Pradesh man by arranging fake documents and working on his looks.
* The racketeers first prepared his fake aadhaar card, voter ID card, matriculation certificate and date of birth certificates, all of which showed him to be the recipient’s son.
* In all the forged documents, Sharma was given a new name, Polepeddy Snayna Podma Phanikumar, and made to repeatedly recite it so that he could confidently spell the name.
*Sharma’s photographs were superimposed even in the recipient’s family portraits so that any cross-checking would not reveal that he did not belong to the family. “The racketeers wanted everything to be foolproof. So, they even photo-shopped the photos of the recipient’s real son so that the donor resembled him,” said the investigator
*This was necessary as the law allows only close family members to donate kidneys to the patients. The man who was to receive Sharma’s kidney is a native of Andhra Pradesh.
The endgame
*On Thursday, just an hour before Sharma was to be operated upon, the police raided the hospital.
* The police had by then gathered total of 200 hours of video recordings.
*The police claimed to have seized several “incriminating” documents from the hospital premises. Arrests so far have been limited to the middlemen
*Police say the role of Batra Hospital’s doctors and staffers and a city-based diagnostic centre is also under the scanner.
*Investigators said this was an interstate racket that had been operating for a long time. The racketeers used to charge Rs 30-40 lakh from each kidney recipient.
Hospital denies any role
*When contacted, Batra Hospital denied any role in the racket, saying, “Batra Hospital conducts all renal transplants fairly and under strict supervision. All related and unrelated transplants are vetted by a committee. All the transplant act guidelines are followed. All documents are checked and the proceedings of the committee are
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Read more: http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/kidney-racket-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-scam-busted-at-delhi-s-batra-hospital/story-1izebU2bRo8hA2laW2PJVM.html
