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India police break up organ transplant ring

GURGAON, India - The last things Mohammed Salim remembered were the knees pinning him to the ground, the guns pointed at his head and, finally, the injection that sent him into oblivion.

When he awoke, he was in agonizing pain, uncertain where he was or why he was wearing a hospital gown.

"We have taken your kidney," a masked man explained. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you."

Salim was one of the last victims in an organ transplant racket that police think sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world over the past nine years.

Police say that when they raided the operation's main clinic in this upscale New Delhi suburb last week, they broke up a ring spanning five Indian states and involving at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics and a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names. Only one doctor has been arrested so far, and police are seeking the person they think was the ringleader, Amit Kumar, who has several aliases.

Some "donors" were forced onto the operating table at gunpoint, while others were tricked with promises of work, Gurgaon police Commissioner Mohinder Lal said. Some sold kidneys willingly, usually for $1,125 to $2,250, the Hindustan Timesreported.

Salim, 33, a laborer with five children, said he was lured from his home town a few hours outside New Delhi by a bearded stranger offering a construction job that paid $3.75 a day, as well as food and lodging. He was told the work would last three months.

[Last modified January 31, 2008, 01:48:37]