The 5ft gangster who’s a giant in £1bn worldwide organ trafficking
He stands at under 5ft tall, but Prem Bajgai is a giant in the global organ trafficking trade.
The softly spoken gangster – once told he was too small to sell his own kidney – masterminds a racket involving doctors, lawyers, forgers and people smugglers to peddle them across three continents.
Now, after being released from a three-year jail term for an earlier organ trafficking scheme, he is selling kidneys to British patients, and says the market is booming.
He flies patients to Nepal and India and pays off politicians, government officials and doctors to perform illegal transplants in private hospitals.
In the last two years he has sold five kidneys to Britons, charging £30,000 a time. To avoid detection, white and black recipients pose as the spouse of their Nepalese donor and Asian recipients become their siblings using fake IDs.
From his family home hidden down a warren of back alleys in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, Bajgai sat beside his wife – whose kidney he sold before marrying her – and proudly described to undercover reporters the scale of his network. ‘Nobody can buy a kidney in this country without me,’ he boasted. ‘I can show you 2,000 donors. Donors are no problem. I am the kingpin.’ And without a trace of irony, he declared: ‘I save lives.’
Police, anti-trafficking campaigners and victims tell a very different story – one of poorly educated donors being tricked into selling their kidneys, not being paid and, in many cases, falling ill from complications from the surgery. Three or four have died as a result of giving a kidney.
For Bajgai, they are simply commodities. At another meeting in a £35-a-night guesthouse, two potential donors looked on anxiously as he gave his sales pitch. He told the reporters – who were posing as potential buyers for a sick relative – they must speak only to him. ‘I have these two guys, but I am the one who takes the decision whatever we do.’
He recruits most donors from the Kavre area outside Kathmandu, where he grew up, and is candid about their motivations. ‘ They are doing it because of poverty. If they had money do you think they’d be selling kidneys? They have no life, no future without money.’ A 32-year- old mother of two children who works as a labourer sat fidgeting nervously through the meeting and raised concerns with Bajgai when she heard she would have to travel from Nepal to India for the operation, saying: ‘Who will look after me there?’
Bajgai si lenced her, declaring: ‘If I say she’s ready, she’s ready.’ When asked, he insisted donors would have ‘no problem’ after the transplant. ‘Six days after the operation, they can go home,’ he said. ‘Ten days recuperation and the donor will be running around. After that, we no longer know them.’
A second potential donor, an unemployed bus conductor with twin girls aged two, looked on horrified as he used his hand to make a crude analogy.
‘I’ve got five fingers. If I cut one off does that mean I can’t use my hand? That’s what happens to the donor. Cut off his finger, and after a while he’ll get used to it.’ Bajgai promises donors around £1,000. But in most cases he pays them no more than £200 – sometimes even nothing – and won’t take their calls afterwards.
Selling a kidney is illegal in India and Nepal and tighter restrictions were recently brought in. But Bajgai has worked out ways round them.
On every deal, he pays a forger and corrupt lawyer to create false papers and identities for both the donor and recipient.
Bajgai charges £30,000 for a kidney swap, including surgeons’ fees and aftercare, which requires patients to make frequent trips back to India.
For women it is an extra £6,000, he explained, because ‘hush money’ must be paid to the donor’s husband.
At his home his wife, a former nurse, showed off her scar after her husband sold her kidney 14 years ago. Bajgai proudly described how he later proposed and the couple now have two sons.
But amid all the boasting, there is constant fear. During three meetings, he repeatedly stressed the need for secrecy.
He said: ‘Do not tell anybody. Not just the UK doctor – you won’t be able to reveal you had a transplant to anybody. Friends, family, no one. Don’t tell anybody and then you’ll have no worries.’
‘Don’t tell anyone and you’ll have no worries’