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India Uncovers Kidney Racket
Mohammad Saleem, 33, shows the bandaged incision left after traffickers drugged him and removed a kidney.
(By Rama Lakshmi -- The Washington Post)
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"This was a racket run by a man who has been on the run for about 15 years," said Manjit Singh Ahlawat, Gurgaon's joint commissioner of police. "He used to charge about 15 lakh rupees [$37,500] from rich patients around the world and pay about 50,000 rupees [$1,270] to the laborer after forcibly removing the kidney. We have seized about 5,000 documents from his office that tell us about the wide network he operated of buyers, middlemen, diagnostic centers, doctors and laborers. He has operated under five different names, various passports, and had 12 bank accounts."
The police have seized Kumar's computers and are decoding his e-mail accounts. Five laborers, three of whom had lost kidneys, were also rescued from the bungalow.
"When I learned my kidney has gone, I thought I was going to die. I cried nonstop," Saleem said, lifting his shirt to show a white bandage. "But now I wish I had just died. How can I support my family now and bring home the bread? I cannot do heavy construction work now -- I feel weak and dizzy all the time."
Next to Saleem's bed were two other laborers who had lost their kidneys last week: Shakeel Abdullah, 28, and Naseem Ahmad, 25.
According to police, Kumar has run the kidney racket on the same pattern since the early 1990s. He and his associates were first detained in Mumbai.
"We first arrested him in 1994," Rakesh Maria, Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, said in a telephone interview. "He was operating under the name Santosh Rameshwar Raut back then. He was supplying poor people's kidneys to clients in Yemen, Malaysia, Turkey and Greece."
After being released on bail, Kumar vanished. "Later he moved to different cities in the north and south," Maria said. "He kept changing his identity and continued his trade. The police booked him several times, but he kept escaping."
Maria's team is now collaborating with the Gurgaon police in the investigation. Authorities have also requested help from Interpol.
Staff writer Rob Stein in Washington contributed to this report.
