Amritsar court convicts 6 in kidney scam

Thursday, 31/10/2013

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AMRITSAR: The court of GS Bakshi, additional sessions judge-1, on Saturday held six persons, including five doctors, two from Amritsar and three from Jalandhar, guilty in a kidney transplant case, on charges of intimidating a minor to donate his kidney to a retired inspector of Haryana Police. The sixth accused, who has been held guilty, is the recipient — the retired inspector of Haryana Police.

The next hearing of the case will be held on November 8 and it is learnt that the quantum of punishment will be decided then. The accused doctors from Amritsar, who have been held guilty, are Dr OP Mahajan, then chairman, authorisation committee, and former principal, Government Medical College, Amritsar; and Dr Jagdish Gargi, then head, department of forensic medicine and member of authorisation committee; while those from Jalandhar are Dr HS Bhutani, Dr Arjinder Singh and Dr SPS Grover, associated with New Ruby Hospital, Jalandhar.

Besides these five, the court has also held Suresh Kumar Sharma, retired inspector of Haryana Police, guilty. Advocate RK Salwan, who was deputed by the department of home affairs and justice, Punjab, to deal with the case, said the case dated back to 2002.

“The case was registered during the tenure of former Amritsar SP city Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh at E division police station and is related to Jalandhar, where the transplant took place, though the approval was given by the authorisation committee based in Amritsar,” he said. Salwan said the case was an offshoot of the main kidney scam also unearthed in 2002, which is sub judice.

“While the case was registered at E division police station, the main case was registered at D division police station. Around 2,000 kidney transplants were reported to have taken place and nine donors were arrested, who on being questioned revealed the names of the accused in the case,” he said.

Salwan said the accused, in this case, faced the charges of intimidating a minor identified as 17-year-old Bagicha Singh, a resident of Jagraon, to donate his kidney to Suresh Kumar Sharma, and forcing him to give his signatures to fulfil the requirements of the authorisation committee. He said the youth was earlier offered a remuneration of 40,000, was kept in confinement and died under mysterious circumstances after the kidney transplant. “The accused in this case were held guilty after the evidence in the case was concluded,” he said. Dr KS Chugh, Chandigarh-based eminent kidney expert, said, “India has been one of the illegal trading centres in the world for kidney trading. Earlier, the Philippines and Pakistan were

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the two prominent centres. In India, Mumbai and Chennai were two big centres, then Amritsar emerged as the biggest centre. After crackdown, some illegal cases are now being reported from Kolkata. Illegal kidney trading has remained a blot in the field of kidney transplant. This judgment is a message for all the racketeers that they can be punished.”