Amit Kumar accused of heading illegal organ transplant ring
THE TORONTO STAR, February 10, 2008
SONYA FATAH
NEW DELHI, India—The country’s premier investigating agency began interrogating the alleged mastermind behind the recently-busted illegal kidney transplant racket after judicial authorities authorized a 12-day police remand.
Avoiding the media glare, authorities from the Central Bureau of Investigation produced Amit Kumar before the chief metropolitan magistrate, Sanjeev Jain, at his Delhi residence after he was handed over by Nepalese authorities.
Kumar will come before the CBI’s special court in Ambala in the state of Haryana on Feb. 22.
In the latest revelations on the increasingly sinister kidney transplant scandal, sources at the CBI said that Kumar was also running a clinic in Noida, east of New Delhi, in a house owned by a senior bureaucrat who is close to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati.
Since the Jan. 24 raid on Kumar’s hospital in Gurgaon, it has also been revealed that the doctor had connections with high-level officials, Bollywood celebrities and even Mumbai’s notorious underworld.
Investigating officials remained tight-lipped at the end of Kumar’s first day of questioning.
“We are interrogating Amit Kumar and it is too early to describe his role in the racket,” said a CBI spokesperson.
Meanwhile, police are building their case against Kumar and the illegal organ trafficking operation, which is alleged to have transplanted more than 500 kidneys into foreign and well-paying Indian patients. Police allege that Kumar and his network forcibly removed kidneys from more than 500 poor labourers over a period of nine years.
A massive hunt was undertaken to track down Kumar following the raid on his Gurgaon hospital. Kumar showed up in Nepal, where is also alleged to have established a hospital for kidney transplants.
An Indian channel reported that Kumar made a desperate attempt to bribe Nepalese police when they nabbed him in his hotel room at the Chitwan forest reserve in southern Nepal. He allegedly offered Nepalese police 2 million rupees if they let him go.
Kumar, whose wife and children live in Brampton, Ont., is also believed to have had Canadian connections.
He insists that he is innocent and did not forcibly remove any kidneys. Police, however, have booked him under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, which include cheating, criminal intimidation, voluntarily causing grievous hurt by grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means, wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy. He is also accused of violating the Human Organ Transplant Act.
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