Kidney racket: Held doctors sent to police custody till August 13

A day after five doctors, including the chief medical officer, of L H Hiranandani Hospital were arrested in connection with an alleged kidney transplant racket, more skeletons tumbled out of closet on Wednesday. While a city court remanded all the four in police custody till August 13, a report submitted by the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) mentioned names of two more doctors who played a vital role in the racket.

Top Mumbai police sources revealed that the two suspected doctors are likely to be arrested soon. The police will also probe whether the accused ran the racket in other hospitals owned by the Hiranandani group across the city. “Although we arrested five doctors based on the findings of the report, two other doctors from the same hospital were found to be involved in the racket. We are studying the report further to determine whether these two doctors were involved in the said operation or a previous case,” said an official from Powai police station. He added that the doctors might face arrest in the coming week.

Producing the five arrested doctors at a local magistrate court, the police sought their custody to find out if there was any exchange of money among the doctors, agents and donors in the alleged racket. “The investigators need to determine why they violated the set provisions and also to gather more evidence in the probe of the kidney racket,” stated the remand report submitted in the court.

“We have mentioned in the remand report that we need to probe them and check if there have been any other cases of illegal kidney transplant cases,\" said an officer.

Confirming the development, DCP and Mumbai police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said that the arrested doctors might be booked on additional charges as investigations progresses. “We have collected many documents from the hospital and are in the process of studying them. For now, the arrested doctors have been booked for not verifying the documents and not following the protocol involved in kidney transplantation. We are still probing whether they were directly linked with the said racket,” he said.

Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested Hiranandani Hospital CEO Dr Sujit Chatterjee, medical director Dr Anurag Naik, Dr Mukesh Shete, Dr Mukesh Shah and Dr Prakash Shetty under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act based on the findings of a three-member panel set up by the state after the racket was unearthed on July 14.

The racket was exposed after the police received a tip-off.