Tamil Nadu kidney racket may be catering to foreigners

CHENNAI: The investigation into the kidney rackets in Tamil Nadu, which has of late been targeting tsunami victims of Chennai (DNA, Jan 15), has stumbled upon another probability of a large number of ‘donated’ kidneys being illegally transplanted in foreigners.

The Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) of the Tamil Nadu police is questioning a 38-year-old man called Raju, who has reportedly provided some clues on the foreigner patient angle.

Raju is said to have told the police that he became a kidney broker after his wife donated her kidney in 2002 and he last year. Raju is being questioned after Mallika, a ‘donor’, complained that he paid her only Rs 40,000 against the promised Rs 1.5 lakh for her kidney.

According to sources, there is a large network of kidney brokers catering to several hospitals in Chennai, Madurai, Tiruchi, Tirunelveli and Coimbatore. These hospitals have been getting a large number of patients from the Gulf, Sri Lanka and the Far East, seeking organ transplants.

These patients consider the transplants here to be safe and affordable than in their countries, though the hospitals charge up to Rs 5 lakh per kidney transplant, as against Rs 2 lakh for Indian patients. The hapless donors, as the tsunami victims’ complaints go, are paid a measly Rs 40,000.

The Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 spells out several conditions (including approval by the state-level ethical committee), which the hospitals have apparently found ways to circumvent. Greater Chennai police commissioner Letika Saran confirmed last week that at least 10 such hospitals across the state have come under the police scanner.

“The foreigners come on tourist visas to get the transplant done. There could be large-scale falsification of documents or probably no documentation at all in some cases,” a police officer said. The police, however, are yet to get detailed statistics of foreigners getting transplants done in the state.

CB-CID superintendent of police K Bhavaneswari told DNA: “We understand that a large number of foreigners come to Tamil Nadu for organ transplants. We will be scrutinising the documents of past transplants and keeping a watch on the hospitals.”

In Madurai, where several tsunami victims from Chennai were operated upon recently, police commissioner M Chidambarasamy said three hospitals have been asked to furnish details of transplants. One of the hospitals had done 300 kidney transplants since 1998, he said.