While a Delhi court on Sunday remanded the alleged kingpin in the multi-crore rupees kidney transplant racket, Dr Amit Kumar, to CBI custody till February 22.
NEW DELHI: While a Delhi court on Sunday remanded the alleged kingpin in the multi-crore rupees kidney transplant racket, Dr Amit Kumar, to CBI custody till February 22, CBI officials visited a Gurgaon hospital on Sunday and recorded the statements of three labourers whose kidneys were allegedly taken out by Kumar.
In another development, Kumar’s associate has named a senior official of the Uttar Pradesh government in Noida, saying his house was used by ‘Dr Kidney’ as a hospital.
Forty-year-old Kumar, who was deported from Nepal on Saturday, was produced before chief metropolitan magistrate Sanjeev Jain at his residence here amid tight security even as the media was waiting in the courts.
Six teams of interrogators are questioning Kumar. Though many expected him to break down under the intense grilling, Kumar was calm and unrepentant about the kidney transplants, which he facilitated at his Gurgaon hospital.
“He admitted conducting kidney transplants but claimed he had not committed any crime,” said a senior CBI official involved in the probe, adding that Kumar had told them that donors were neither duped nor forced.
Kumar was arrested from a jungle resort in Nepal on February 8. CBI sources said Kumar was unfazed during questioning. “He is trying to dodge direct questions relating to foreign patients, who came to him for a kidney transplant,” said the official.
When quizzed about his brother Jeevan, who is evading arrest, Kumar said he had spoken to him twice after reaching Nepal, but did not know his whereabouts.
The CBI has charged Kumar under various sections of the IPC including 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapon), 342 (wrongful confinement), 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). Kumar has also been booked under Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, and if convicted, he face a jail term of up to 10 years.
Meanwhile, a team of two CBI officials visited a hospital in Gurgaon on Sunday and recorded the statements of three labourers whose kidneys were allegedly taken out by Kumar.
Four labourers — Sahid, Daleep and Naresh of Uttar Pradesh and Rajender, a resident of Chamauli in Uttaranchal were rescued by Gurgaon police from a flat, around 10 km from Dr Amit’s house-cum-guest house at DLF Phase-1 two days ago.
The CBI team recorded the statements of three of the four labourers since Naresh, the fourth labourer had been sent to a Rohtak hospital for treatment after he developed pain in the stomach and his remaining kidney.
The team also visited the guest house-cum-hospital at Sector 23 and at DLF Phase 1, primarily used by Kumar in Gurgaon.
The CBI sleuths wanted to verify whether these places were equipped to conduct kidney transplants, an agency source said.
Kumar’s associate Upendra told reporters at the chief judicial magistrate’s court premises, where he was produced by Uttar Pradesh last week that the house in Noida sector 43 was used by Kumar for a year.
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