With police taking into custody yet another city doctor on complaints from a kidney donor, Chennai is in the spotlight again as a kidney hub, a cheap option for patients outside Tamil Nadu for organ transplant surgeries.The Chennai police on Friday picked up a 37-year-old acupuncture practitioner, Ramesh, running a private polyclinic in Vadapalani, on charges of acting as a tout and promising a donor Rs 3 lakh, but paying her Rs 63,000, a silk saree and a gold bracelet.Police swooped down on Ramesh based on a complainant by Uma, a 35-year-old resident of Washermanpet in north Chennai. They are also searching for Maheswaran, a 50-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil, suffering from renal failure and for whom the kidney was allegedly purchased.Uma complained to the police that she was poor and struggled to make ends meet. Seeing her plight, a neighbour took her to Ramesh, who promised her Rs 3 lakh if she donated her kidney. Interestingly, a well-known hospital in Mogappair initially refused to conduct the transplant surgery on Maheshwaran, pointing out that he was a Sri Lankan, whereas Uma was a Chennai resident and there was no relationship between the two.According to police, Ramesh then organised for Maheshwaran to take Uma to Sri Lanka allegedly using forged documents, even obtaining fake Lankan citizenship, to justify the claim that she had been working as a maid for him(Maheshwaran).Based on the new set of documents, the hospital then conducted the surgery, police said. Ramesh told the police that he had obtained a diploma in alternative medicine from Sri Lanka.The incident comes close on the heels of the arrest earlier this month in Mumbai of the Chennai-based nephrologists, Dr Palani Ravichandran, the key person in a global kidney racket. Dr Ravichandran used the Kidney Diseases & Institute of Organ Transplantation(KIOT), at St Thomas Hospital, and the Bharathi Raja Hospital in Chennai to conduct nearly 500 surgeries in the past four years, according to Joint Commissioner of Police, Mumbai.The recipients and donors were from across India as well as neighbouring countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Myanmar.In January, when a scandal broke out involving tsunami victims in Tsunami Nagar in Chennai, many of whom sold their kidneys to tide over their financial problems, the Tamil Nadu government ordered a crime branch inquiry.It also cracked down on hospitals and cancelled the licences of two of the 54 hospitals permitted to carry out transplants. It suspended the licences of 13 hospitals in February this year. But soon the suspended licences were again cleared. Following Dr Ravichandran’s arrest, the state government also cancelled the licenses of three hospitals under the Transplantation of Human Organs (TOHO) Act, including the two branches of the Bharathiraja Speciality Hospitals and St Thomas Hospital at St Thomas Mount, where he conducted the surgeries. Director of Medical Services Bawa Fathurudeen said that efforts were on to get the records of these hospitals from the Income Tax Commissioner in order to ascertain how many kidney surgeries had been conducted by Dr Ravichandran. Soon after his arrest, the IT department conducted raids on his residence and the hospitals and seized several documents pertaining to his surgeries.“We are also conducting frequent inspections at the hospitals which possess licenses to conduct organ transplant surgeries. The authorisation committee, which sanctions these surgeries, has been insisting on all relevant documents. But unfortunately, many cases have not come under the purview of the committee,” said Fathurudeen.The government claimed it was taking all steps to clamp down on erring hospitals and was thinking of putting a police officer on the authorisation committee so that hospitals’ claims that the donors weren’t being coerced or cheated with offers of money.But enforcement has been lax and kidney rackets continue to flourish. Police believe more cases are likely to tumble out.
