Ruby Hall transplant: Police look for key racketeer who ‘facilitated multiple transplants with fake identities’

Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ramnath Pokale said, “In addition to the two middlemen arrested in the case, we have launched a search for a key racketeer who, as the probe suggests, has facilitated several kidney transplants in various hospitals. We have traced five persons who have donated kidneys through this nexus. We are speaking to these people to get more leads on what went into the transplants.”

The current case pertains to a kidney swap procedure conducted in the last week of March, between a man from Moshi and a woman from Kolhapur posing as his wife, and a mother-daughter duo from Baramati. While the Baramati mother’s kidney was given to the Moshi resident, the Kolhapur woman’s kidney was given to the Baramati woman’s daughter. The Kolhapur woman has alleged that she was promised Rs 15 lakh for donating the kidney and approached the police later when she did not receive any money.

While kidney swapping is allowed after fulfillment of all legal norms, any financial transaction for doing so is illegal. Police have invoked provisions of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, along with Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.

The 15 people named in the FIR are Managing Trustee of the Hospital Dr Purvez K Grant, the Deputy Medical Director Dr Rebecca John, Legal Advisor Manjusha Kulkarni, Consulting Nephrologist Dr Abhay Sadre, Urologists Dr Bhupat Bhati and Dr Himesh Gandhi and Transplant Coordinator Surekha Joshi. Others named in the case are the patient from the Moshi area of Pimpri-Chinchwad who received the kidney, his wife, their three family members, the woman from Kolhapur who was presented as the receiver’s wife to become the donor, and two middlemen. The FIR was filed based on a complaint by Dr Sanjog Kadam, the deputy director of medical services, Pune.

Ruby Hall Clinic’s managing trustee Dr Purvez K Grant had earlier told The Indian Express, “Ruby Hall has done nothing wrong. We are being unnecessarily harassed.”