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Police: Transplant Ring Forcibly Cut Out Kidneys

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By SAM DOLNICK, The Associated Press

Published: January 31, 2008

GURGAON, India - The last things Mohammed Salim remembered were the knees pinning him to the ground, the guns pointed at his head and, finally, the injection that sent him into oblivion.

When he awoke, he was in agonizing pain, uncertain where he was or why he was wearing a hospital gown.

"We have taken your kidney," a masked man calmly explained. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you."

Salim was one of the last victims in an organ transplant racket that police think sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world during the past nine years.

Police say that when they raided the operation's main clinic in this upscale suburb of New Delhi last week, they broke up a ring spanning five Indian states and involving at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics, and a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names and, in one clinic, five foreigners - three Greeks and two Americans of Indian descent - who authorities think were waiting for transplants.

Only one doctor has been arrested so far and police are searching for the alleged ringleader, Amit Kumar, who has several aliases and has been accused in past organ transplant schemes in India. "Due to its scale, we believe more members of the Delhi medical fraternity must have been aware of what was going on," Gurgaon Police Commissioner Mohinder Lal told reporters this week.

Some "donors" were forced onto the operating table at gunpoint, and others were tricked with promises of work, police said. There were also some who sold kidneys willingly, usually for $1,125 to $2,250, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The sale of human organs is illegal in India.

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