Kidney racket: Cops probing whether arrested doctors involved in exchange of money

Mumbai: Mumbai Police is probing several angles including whether the four doctors from LH Hiranandani Hospital arrested along with its CEO in an alleged kidney transplant racket were involved in any exchange of money with agents and donors, a local court was told on Wednesday. The court, meanwhile, remanded the five people in police custody until Saturday.[caption id=“attachment_2948158” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  LH Hiranandani Hospital, Powai. Screenshot from hospital website[/caption] Hospital CEO Sujit Chatterjee, medical director Anurag Naik, Mukesh Shetye, Mukesh Shaha and Prakash Shetye were arrested on Tuesday under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act on the basis of a report by the Director of State Health Services Department, which named them during the inquriy. Police told the court of Local Metropolitan Magistrate, Ashwini Lokhande in Andheri that the arrested doctors were also attached with other hospitals in city and that they wanted to probe if the racket is run in other hospitals as well. Police also wanted to find out if there was any exchange of money among the doctors, agents and the donors in alleged illegal transplant of kidneys. Police are also studying the Call Detail Record (CDR) of the doctors and the racketeers arrested earlier. “After studying the (Director of State Health Services) report we arrested them. They (the doctors) are accused of negligence for not verifying the documents and not following the protocol involved in transplantation,” police spokesperson DCP Ashok Dudhe said. However, the defence lawyers told the court that it was not the doctors’ job to scrutinise the documents. They also argued that there is a separate Ethics Committee which screens the documents before allowing transplant. The racket was exposed after the police were tipped off that a kidney transplant operation had been scheduled on 14 July at the privately-run Hiranandani Hospital in Powai where the donor and the recipient were not related. Following the bust up, police arrested nine persons, including the donor, receiver and agents. The operation on Brijkishor Jaiswal, the recipient, was stopped at the last moment as police found that the woman who was donating him the kidney was not his real wife, contrary to the papers submitted by the duo. The woman had pretended to be Jaiswal’s wife only to be able to donate him the kidney for monetary gains, according to the police. Police then started probing if anybody else had received kidney using similar subterfuge and if the hospital authorities were involved.