Kidney trading racket busted

Scam connected donors with recipients, who were willing to pay Rs3m to the agents

Indian police are investigating a major organ trade racket after they arrested two men, including an alleged kingpin, at Mumbai airport for trafficking poor people for their kidneys to Egypt, officials said yesterday.

The men — identified as Nizamuddin and Suresh Prajapati — were arrested last week and have been charged with human trafficking, police said.

Prajapati, known to police as “kidney kingpin”, had been arrested by police in southern Telangana state last year on suspicion of trafficking nearly 60 people to Sri Lanka for their kidneys and was out on bail.

“We were alerted by an immigration official at the Mumbai international airport who found three passports on one of them.

“One passport belonged to a donor they were arranging to take to Egypt,” said senior inspector Lata Shirsath.

“They have taken six people between May and July, and kidney transplants in four cases were already done. We spoke to the hospital in Cairo and asked them not to go ahead with the two remaining transplant procedures.”

More deals made

Police said they suspected there were more agents involved in the trade as the duo had arranged donors from Delhi, Jammu, Hyderabad and Kerala, who were being sent on tourist visas to Cairo.

The recipients were also from different parts of India, and flew to Cairo to undergo the transplant procedure to beat India’s rules that do not allow the commercial trade of organs.

Police said the recipients paid Rs3 million (Dh172,351) to the two agents for arranging the kidney, of which the donors were paid Rs500,000 (Dh28,725).