Doctors and driver held for illegal eye trade

CHANDIGARH: The Patiala police have arrested a gang led by two doctors engaged in selling eyes extracted from dead bodies. Dr JPS Sodhi and his wife, Dr Neelima Sodhi employed their driver, Manjit, to procure the eyes from a mortuary and sell them to the needy persons.

Manjit’s earlier employer, another doctor, was arrested for a similar nefarious trade in Patiala in 2004.

Patiala SSP SK Asthana said that the gang would pay the mortuary staff Rs1,500 for one eye. The eyes were extracted from bodies that came for post-mortem. These were later sold to needy persons for anything between Rs30,000 to Rs50,000 a piece.
The police said the gang had been operating for over three years and is likely to have spread its tentacles in nearby Haryana and Delhi.

Raids conducted by the Patiala police in other parts of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi point to a nationwide network, allegedly developed by Manjit and the others in the last few years, to purchase eyes from hospital mortuaries.

Interrogation of the arrested doctor and his driver revealed that Manjit used to deal with the class IV employees of government hospitals to collect eyes from dead bodies.

“Dr Neelima appointed Manjit as her driver in 2004 after the arrest of her earlier boss. Preliminary investigations suggest that Manjit had been in this organ trade for more than four years,” Ashthana said. The police also recovered a pair of eyes from the doctor couple in Rajpura.

b_ajay@dnaindia.net