Kidney transplant scam busted in Chennai

The recent arrest of an Indian doctor in Chennai has revealed an alarming rise in illegal kidney transplants, in which Sri Lankans too have figured.

The Doctor Kingpin Conducted 471 kidney transplants in two Chennai hospitals in the last six years, charging Indian Rs 1.5 million to Rs 2 million per operation. He owns three bungalows and three farmhouses in and around the city.

Donors, most of them poor, gullible women, were lured by lakhs but paid only a few thousands of rupees.

Chennai cops now admit that it is but a fraction of a well-organised racket involving a network of brokers, sub-brokers, and doctors, with gullible donors hoping to better their lot.

Till the Mumbai Police arrested Dr Palani Ravichandran on October 16, and discovered that the trade was thriving. With his tally of 471 transplants in six years-most of them at Chennai’s

Bharati Raja and St Thomas Mount hospitals-Ravichandran is believed to be the mastermind behind a racket which is worth several hundred millions.

Charging between Rs 1.5 million and Rs 2.5 million per surgery and paying donors only in the region of Rs 25,000-Rs 60,000, Dr Ravichandran’s personal assets are worth Rs 100 crore.

Among the scores of women who parted with a kidney to buy a better life is Uma Devi, 26. Promised Rs 300,000 by a broker and a “Dr” Ramesh of Arun Polyclinic in Vadapalani, she donated her kidney so her husband could have plastic surgery to fix the damage an acid attack caused to his face and chest nearly three years ago.

But the doc reneged on the deal and she ended up with just Rs 63,000, a sari and a gold bracelet. She used the money to pay off her debts and later filed a police complaint saying she had been cheated.

Uma Devi’s case is quite instructive of the ingenious means the racketeers had devised to circumvent the law. Before she could offer herself as a donor, Uma was sent to Sri Lanka under an assumed identity-Govindamma-and a false Indian passport in April 2005.

She returned a month later as Uma, on a Sri Lankan passport, and shown as a relative of Maheshwaran, a Lankan, who was undergoing dialysis at the Madras Medical Mission hospital.

The idea was to show that Uma was her kidney recipient’s relative in the medical report.

“They spoke to us so well,” says Uma. “And they were doctors, after all. So, we trusted them.” “I saw my neighbour go for blood and other tests,” says Rajambal, another donor from Uma’s neighbourhood. “She told me that a broker was going to give her money for her kidney.

Since I had a daughter of marriageable age and no economic means to get her married, I decided to donate my kidney.

I now feel I sold a part of my body rather cheaply.” - Outlook