India-Bangladesh kidney racket: Another Apollo doctor, clearance committee under police scanner

This disclosure has set in motion two lines of inquiry, sources said. Police have sought “comprehensive details” of all kidney transplants involving Bangladeshi nationals conducted at Apollo Hospital in Delhi and Noida, as well as at Yatharth Hospital in Noida — where Kumari also worked.

Investigators have also turned to the government-appointed authorisation committee, the body that ultimately approves kidney transplants, for details on the panel and their approvals and if they had flagged any irregularities. “The accused will claim they had the necessary approvals so we will investigate if any member of the authorisation committee was involved…if due process was strictly followed,” a source said.

Kumari, now under suspension, was the lone doctor working with the gang, police had said, and had performed around 15-16 transplants from 2021-23 in Yatharth Hospital. A senior consultant and a kidney transplant surgeon, she joined Delhi’s Apollo Hospital as a junior doctor almost 15 years ago. She was engaged on a fee-for-service basis and not on the hospital’s payroll. A Yatharth spokesperson had told The Indian Express that Kumari was working with the hospital as a visiting consultant and performed transplants on patients brought by her. An Apollo spokesperson said that she was “under suspension” and the police action was related to an “investigation pertaining to procedures carried out at another hospital and prima facie not related to any action or acts at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.”

The alleged racket includes forging Bangladesh High Commission documents to prove donor and recipient were related. Indian law allows only altruistic donations either by close family members or distant relatives and friends who can prove their motivation is not financial. In the present case, patients from Bangladesh were lured by a network of middlemen, Kumari, and their associates for organ transplantation, police said.

Sources told The Indian Express that the accused – one of the seven arrested so far — had worked at another private hospital in Faridabad before moving to Apollo Hospital in Delhi in 2021.

He disclosed that he was lured to Apollo Hospital by a Bangladeshi national named Tasin, who promised better pay. At that time, Tasin worked in the medical tourism field, bringing Bangladeshi patients to India for treatments. The accused claimed that Tasin, along with two other Bangladeshi nationals, Rasel and Rokon, regularly met patients and donors from Bangladesh and arranged transplants in India. Rasel and Rokon have been arrested.

The Indian national has claimed that Tasin’s patients were predominantly those in dire need of kidney transplants. Most of these patients were treated by Dr Kumari. “However, in some cases, another top surgeon sometimes stepped in to perform the transplant surgery on patients brought in by Tasin,” the source said.

Second, he has reportedly cited instances of how documents to show the relationship between the donor and recipients were forged. “For instance, he has disclosed how Dr Kumari’s assistant would instruct Tasin to prepare these fraudulent documents before the surgery. In one particular case, this was accomplished in a mere 30 minutes,” the source said. The accused also revealed that Tasin took money from a Bangladeshi recipient and then fled the country.

The Delhi police have also recovered 32 fake stamps of doctors, forged files of patients/recipients and donors.

“During interrogation, they have confessed that they targeted the patients suffering from kidney disease hailing from Bangladesh by visiting the dialysis centers in Bangladesh. They arranged the donor from Bangladesh, taking benefit of their poor financial background and exploiting them on the pretext of providing them a job in India,” said Amit Goel, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime, Delhi Police.