Cops rescue student mins before he was about to lose his kidney
FEARLESS Jaideep Sharma posed as a donor, tricking racketeers into believing him
When Jaideep Sharma’s friend went missing last September from his hometown in Rajasthan’s Sikar, the 24-year-old MBA student had an inkling that it had something to do with a kidney racket. For days before his disappearance, Rajesh Mehla had been telling him about plans to donate his kidney for ₹10 lakh that would help improve his family’s financial condition.
Without informing his family, Sharma embarked on a dangerous mission to trace his friend. He posed as a donor and went through the entire drill before actual donation, conducted sting operations on the racketeers and stayed in Delhi for 40 days to expose the interstate racket.
On Thursday, he was minutes away from having his kidney removed when a Delhi Police team that had been shadowing him all through, raided Batra Hospital in South Delhi and “rescued” him. “I have heard that four racketeers have been arrested but my friend remains missing,” Sharma told HT.
Pursuing his MBA degree from Symbiosis University in Pune, Sharma had been told by Mehla about how he had been contacted by some kidney agents. So when Mehla disappeared, Sharma decided to pursue the same agents. He reached out to them through email.
But the racketeers had multiple layers of screening to ensure that Sharma was a genuine donor and not a policeman laying a trap. “Once they agreed to buy his kidney for ₹4 lakh, he contacted me and requested me to conduct a sting operation,” said Sukesh Ranjan, input editor of News24 channel.
“Once we were sure of his confidence, we contacted senior Delhi Police officers who approved our operation and confirmed that they would be with us throughout,” said Ranjan.
Over the next 40 days, Sharma played to the tunes of the racketeers to avoid any suspicion. News24 reporter, Rahul Prakash, posed as Sharma’s friend in the operation.
As the time the sting was about to end on Thursday afternoon, Sharma was in the operation theatre at Batra Hospital.
After rescuing Sharma, the police arrested four middlemen involved in the racket and are set to question some doctors and staffers from Batra Hospital.
Meanwhile, the hospital said: “...There is no involvement of the hospital in any wrongdoing. The hospital has and will cooperate with the police...”