2 more hospitals under scanner

The Delhi police on Sunday intensified its search for the kingpin of the kidney trading racket, even as they served notices to the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital here, asking the top authorities to join its probe and provide documents related to all the kidney transplants in last few months.

Five separate teams are conducting raids in Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad for the kingpin of the racket T. Rajukumar Rao, who is believed to be in the business for the past few years and connected to similar rackets in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, a senior official said.

Suspecting the involvement of some senior staffers and even doctors in the racket, the Delhi police has served notices under CrPC Sections 90 and 160 to the higher authorities of the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, asking them to join the probe and provide documents pertaining to the kidney transplants carried out in the hospital in the past few months. They will be scrutinised by a 25member special team set up to crack the entire nexus, the official said.

The investigators have also identified at least three recipients and five donors having links with the racket and are considering further legal action. Two of the donors are women presently in hospitals and three recipients are from Kolhapur, Jammu and Ghaziabad.

A police team also visited the address of the Ghaziabad recipient, but it emerged that he had left that place.

Two more prominent private hospitals in the city have come under the police scanner. The police has so far come across five cases of kidney transplants conducted in the city through this racket and during interrogation, the accused disclosed about 10- 15 more transplants conducted at Jalandhar and Coimbatore in last two years, an official said. They used to charge ` 40- 50 lakh from the recipients, of which not even 10 per cent reached the donors.