Monday, January 28, 2008

Massive kidney scam reported in Gurgaon



Gurgaon, just south of Delhi, is reported as the Millenium City, as a sample of growth. It has gleaming buildings, swanky malls, and plenty of BPO's, IT offices and many other such high-growth industries. It is seen as a self-sufficient township, with a large number of people now living there. However, there are many warts in this story. It suffers from infrastructure problems with poor water and electricity, lack of easy public transport, and sectors not involved in these sunrise sectors feel alienated from all this growth (one just needs to go and see 'Old Gurgaon').
And amidst all this, a heinous trade involving the removal of kidneys from poor people and selling to rich patients needing a kidney was going on (for a long time, maybe more than 8-10 years). Refer this news:

GURGAON: A Rs 100 crore kidney transplant racket that thrived on exploiting the poor and miserable with false promises and then removing their kidneys by force has been busted a few kilometres from the national capital.
The sheer scale of the racket — organized and brazen — that spanned six states and catered to the rich, including NRIs and foreigners, has left the authorities shaken. It was carried out right under the nose of the police in the Millennium City and could have been thriving for the past 15 years, according to one account, though Gurgaon police said it was eight years old.


What seems very clear that such a major operation could not have gone on without the complicity of authorities at some level, given the news that the main doctor involved, Dr. Amit Kumar (maybe not his real name) has been arrested many times earlier and yet was involved again in something of this scale. He is on the run, and even 2 days later, has not been caught. It may be very much possible that he had been tipped off before the raid.
One side-effect of this scandal was that the Government was thinking of making a change in the organ business, with measures to make it easier to get organs, including cadaver organ retrieval. However, the Government needs to ensure that even in such a case, the laws that rule against such organ selling and forcible removal are strictly enforced and maintained.

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posted by Ashish Agarwal @ 8:34 AM