Finally, Ramanagar police puts seven kidney agents behind bars

The Ramanagar police have finally succeeded in nabbing seven people in connection with the kidney racket that had almost became a cottage industry for a few people in the district that is about 50 km from Bangalore. DNA had exposed the racket on November 14 in a four-part series.

Anupam Agrawal, superintendent of police, Ramanagar district, said on Saturday that the series published in DNA and the video CDs provided by this correspondent had helped the police nab the agents at the right time. “We will interrogate the accused to find out the details about the involvement of other people,” Agrawal said. “We have been trying to find out how many doctors were involved in this racket.”

Addressing the media later, Agrawal made it clear that the police took up the case suo motu based on the news article published in an English daily DNA. “We have collected many documents relating to this racket and the preliminary investigation reveals 25 kidney transplantations took place illegally,” said Agrawal. “All the transplantations were done at well-known private hospitals such as Columbia Asia, Manipal, Apollo and also the government-owned Victoria Hospital.”

The SP said that special teams formed to probe the kidney racket would continue to investigate the involvement of the authorities from the aforementioned hospitals. “The involvement of others in this racket is also yet to be established,” he said.

The police have identified the accused as Mahadeva alias Mahadevaiah of Nayakanahalli in Kanakapur taluk; Gopala of Ramanagara; CD Srikanth, a contract labourer in the Magadi Food and Civil Supplies office; Rajanna and Manjunatha from Magadi; Ranjan, revenue inspector, Bangalore North and Ananth from Bangalore.

According to the SP, Mahadeva and Gopala were the kingpins of the scam. They used to pursue poor people and convince them to donate kidneys for monetary benefit at Mariappanapalya in the Kumbalgodu police station limits. “Documents relating to the transplantation of kidneys and fake voter identity cards were seized from them,” he said.

The interrogation of these two led to the arrest of Srikanth, who created and provided fake documents for the kidney transplantation. “One computer, scanner, and hard disk that were used to create duplicate voter identity cards were seized from Srikanth,” the SP said. “We have sent the hard disk to the forensic laboratory for verification, which will reveal how long Srikanth had been involved with these illegal activities. Srikanth had engaged the services of two agents — Rajanna and Manjunatha — for it.”

He said the accused used to get the kidney transplantation done after getting the approval by producing fake documents. “They used to collect Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh from each recipient, out of which only 10 to 20 per cent was given to the donor and the remaining amount was distributed among the agents involved,” he said.

The police said Ranjan used to supply fake documents pertaining to the family tree of the recipient and donor. “Ranjan had engaged Ananth as his agent,'” the police said.

Full-time farmer, part-time broker
Mahadeva, who used to boast of having 20 years’ experience in arranging donors for kidney transplantation, first claimed that he had nothing to do with the kidney racket. “Mahadeva has shifted base to Sathanur from Ramanagar,” said BS Manjunath, police inspector, Kumbalagodu police station, who headed the investigation team. “He bought two-and-half acres of land near Sathanur and also bought milch cows. He blatantly denied his involvement in the kidney racket, but maintained silence when we screened the video that was made by this DNA correspondent as part of a sting operation. He has two wives and has already ‘donated’ one kidney of each of them.”

Gopala, Mahadeva’s sidekick and also known as Kidney Gopala, used to advise the relatives of kidney patients. Police inspector Manjunath, who played the decoy to nab the culprits, said he was surprised at Gopala’s communication skills.

“I acted as a patient’s husband, and contacted Gopala, asking him to arrange a donor for my wife,” said Manjunath. “He demanded Rs1 lakh as advance payment. He told me that he was not doing anything illegally and advised me to take care of my wife’s health. I had asked him how he would provide documents related to my family tree, ration card and voter ID. It was he who gave the information about Srikanth that led us to arrest the latter.”

During the investigation, the police found that Mahadeva had been arrested by the Nelamangala police in 2006-07 in a kidney-racket investigation by the Crime Investigation Department. He had been absconding since his release from custody and had not been attending court. A warrant had been issued against him. Gopal and Manju were also absconding after similar cases were registered against them.