The city police arrested five persons involved in the inter-State kidney transplant racket involving lakhs of rupees. Commissioner’s Task Force DCP V.B. Kamalasan Reddy told a press conference that the investigations involved eight city corporate hospitals where the accused got kidney transplanted for 23 persons falsely claiming that the donors were their relatives and family members.  

According to the A.P. Transplantations of Human Organs Act, “An Authorisation Committee comprising the Director of Medical Education as its chairman has to authorise donation of kidneys by persons other than family members of recipients.” The donors constituted mostly form Khammam, W.G. and R.R. Districts.

The patients under going dialysis would be identified by the gang which went around hospitals and offered to arrange kidney donors for them, and additionally ‘take care of all documentations’ and used to collect Rs 1.20 lakh to Rs. 1.75 lakh and keep Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1.25 lakh as commission. Fake documents were created by them claiming the donors as the distant relatives of the recipients having no commercial interest and present the same to the committee. In this way the gang secured permission for 14 persons. When the committee strictly inspected the applications, the accused even claimed the donors as the blood relatives of the recipients.

Applications in the second category were accepted at the hospital but the donors were sent for Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) test to fond out compatibility and linkage with the patient. In case the HLA test report was negative the accused would scan the copy of the report, edit it suitably in the computer, take out a fresh print out and submit it to the hospital.

A. Srinivas and T. Pitchaiah, who sold their kidneys, D. Sudarshan, B. Sai Kumar, a dubbing artiste and E. Jayaram Reddy, were among the arrested persons. Two kidney transplantations were performed in Chennai and the remaining at Hyderabad.