Kidney scam: Tainted MP doctor role emerges

The Powai police on Monday filed a chargesheet in the kidney donation racket that was busted at Powai’s Dr L.H. Hiranandani Hospital in July. The cops added that pathologist Suwin Shetty and general practitioner Veena Sewlikar, both from Hiranandani Hospital, are two accused who are yet to be arrested.

The 800-plus-page chargesheet has statements of the 49 witnesses and names Sunder Singh, who donated his kidney in March this year and later turned whistleblower, as the prime witness It further names all the five arrested doctors as accused, including hospital CEO Sujit Chatterjee.

The police have also added the name of a Dr Vinod Patel, who was involved in a kidney racket that was busted in Madhya Pradesh late last year. The chargesheet names a total of 18 accused people, including transplant coordinator Nilesh Kamble, all the five arrested doctors of Hiranandani Hospital, middlemen Baijendra Bisen, Iqbal khan, Bharatbhushan Sharma and Yusuf Diwan, the recipient Brijkishore Jaiswal and his son Kishan, and the donor Shobha Thakur.

The document also contained the findings of the three-member panel set up by the Directorate of Health Services (DHS), which was investigating the role of the doctors in the racket.

Based on the findings of the DHS report, the police revealed in the chargesheet that Kamble, along with all the five arrested doctors —Chatterjee, medical director Anurag Naik, nephrologist Mukesh Shetye and urologists Prakash Shetty and Mukesh Shah — acted for “personal benefit and the hospital’s benefit”.

The chargesheet talks in detail about the monetary transactions made by the accused and reveals that based on Thakur’s statements, she was promised Rs 2.5 lakh once the surgery was conducted, while Kamble was paid Rs 8 lakh. The total cost of the surgery borne by the to-be recipient, Jaiswal, was Rs 21 lakh.

The chargesheet also implicates Shetye and says that Jaiswal met with Shetye after talking to Kamble. It adds that it was with help from Shetye that Jaiswal got in touch with the accused doctors who were part of the local authorisation panel.