CORRESPONDENTS
TINSUKIA/DIBRUGARH: Tinsukia and Dibrugarh police, in a joint operation, apprehended 4 human organ traffickers from Margherita on Thursday, identified as Zakir Hussain (53 years) and Sankar Chetanu (28 years) hailing from Veneer Mills in Margherita, and Samir Paul (37 years) and Gopal Roy (31 years) from Dibrugarh.
According to police sources, the culprits allegedly lured a person to sell his kidney against a handsome payment and employment. The arrest was made following a complaint from the victim's family members.
This organized kidney trafficking was also reported earlier from Tinsukia and other parts of Assam. At least 3 known patients from Tinsukia in recent times voluntarily opted to engage agents for the procurement of kidneys instead of donors from their own family members, with each transaction costing them around Rs 38 lakh and the donors getting a meagre sum of Rs 5 lakh, that too in instalments.
According to these families, the local agents, after handing over the donor/s to the Guwahati party, disappear, after which the Guwahati party, in turn, hands over the donor to the main operatives at Kolkata, who too are from Assam/North East, said a source. Almost all kidney transplantations were being carried out at a renowned cardiology hospital in Kolkata.
In the majority of cases, the donors are not known to recipients, or vice versa. A hospital source, on condition of anonymity, told this correspondent that the hospital was not concerned about the illegal nature of the racket.
The hospital charges the usual transplantation fees, ranging from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, depending on the health condition of the patients. In total, a patient's family incurs around Rs 50 lakh in pre-operative, operative, and post-operative stages.
It has been usually observed in previous cases that the donors or the donor's family members (mostly from the economically weaker section) refrain from registering any complaints if the promised amount is paid by the agents.
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