Police said yesterday they have arrested the suspected leader of an illegal organ donation racket run out of one of the country’s top hospitals.
T Rajkumar Rao was arrested in the eastern city of Kolkata late Tuesday on suspicion of leading a criminal gang that lured poor people to sell their kidneys, which were sold on for huge profits.
The commercial trade of organs is illegal in India and the gang forged documents to pretend the donors were relatives of transplant patients in order to undergo the operations at the Apollo hospital.
“He (Rao) was arrested from Kolkata,” police investigator Nidhin Walson said in New Delhi.
An officer in Kolkata said Rao was wanted in a number of such cases across several South Asian countries.
On Tuesday police arrested three donors including a couple who sold their kidneys for a combined Rs700,000 ($10,500) to pay off a loan they took out to cover the cost of their son’s medical treatment.
Five staff at the Apollo hospital have also been arrested.
Apollo has denied any role in the scam, saying it has been a “victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital.”
On Tuesday, it said it had set up an independent inquiry committee to advise on safeguards.
Millions of Indians suffer from kidney disease, mostly because of high rates of diabetes. But a chronic shortage of organs available for transplant has fuelled a black market.