Masterminds of kidney stealing racket, Amit Kumar and Upender Kumar have been sentenced by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Panchkula to undergo seven years of rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 60 lakh each.
The agency had taken over this case in February 2008 relating to illegal kidney trading racket in Palam Vihar, Gurgaon wherein poor people were lured for lucrative employment by the Kumars. Once in the net, their kidneys were extracted and transplanted to wealthy clients mostly from abroad.
Amit Kumar had a degree in Ayurvedic sciences and was not a qualified surgeon, yet he allegedly managed to have clients from abroad and carried out transplants for them using kidneys of poor people who came into his net.
"The accused used to fraudulently allure poor people on the pretext of giving them employment and later on fraudulently removed their kidneys through surgical operation without their consent and authorisation from the competent authority for huge monetary consideration and planted these kidneys in the bodies of recipients," CBI spokesperson said.
The court also ordered for compensation of three victims to the tune of Rs 10 lakh each, CBI said in a statement. After the racket was busted by an Uttar Pradesh police team from Moradabad in January 2008, Kumar slipped to Nepal and remained in hiding for a month before being arrested by the Nepalese authorities from from a jungle resort, 60 km from Indo-Nepal border after a fortnight.
The CBI said it booked the accused under charges of criminal conspiracy to voluntarily causing grievous hurt, wrongful confinement, cheating among others. Charges under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 relating to removal of human organ without authority, commercial dealing in human organ were also slapped against him.
