Tears well up in P. Guna’s eyes as he stares at a long

Tears well up in P. Guna’s eyes as he stares at a long scar running down his side. A year ago, he attempted to stave off mounting debt by swapping one of his healthy kidneys for quick cash.”Humans don’t need two kidneys, I was made to believe,” he said. “I can sell my extra kidney and become rich, I thought.”
At the time, an organ trader promised Guna, 38, a motorized-rickshaw driver with a fourth-grade education, $2,500 for the kidney, of which he eventually received only half. Since then, he has experienced excruciating pain in his hip that has kept him from working full time and pushed him deeper in debt.
In recent years, many Indian cities – like Chennai in southern India – have become hubs of a murky business in kidney transplants, despite a 1994 nationwide ban on human organ sales (the Transplant of Human Organ Act states only relatives of patients can donate kidneys).
An influx of patients, mainly foreigners, seeking the transplants, has made the illicit market a lucrative business. Some analysts say the business thrives for the same reasons that have made India a top destination for medical tourism: low cost and qualified doctors. In fact, medical tourism is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2012, according to government estimates.Not surprisingly, an organized group of organ traders in cahoots with unscrupulous doctors is constantly on the prowl for donors like Guna.In Gurgaon, a posh New Delhi suburb, police last month busted an illegal organ racket, which included doctors, nurses, pathology clinics and hospitals. In the past 14 years, the participants allegedly removed kidneys from about 500 day laborers, the majority of them abducted or conned, before selling the organs to wealthy clients.
Police say the doctor believed to be the mastermind behind the operation, Amit Kumar, searched for donors by cruising in luxury cars outfitted with medical testing machines, and kept sophisticated surgical equipment in a residential apartment. In his office, police found letters and e-mail messages from 48 people from nine countries inquiring about transplants.On Thursday, police arrested Kumar in Chitwan, a Nepalese jungle resort. Local news reports said he was identified by a hotel employee who recognized him from Indian television broadcasts seen in Nepal. “I have not duped anybody,” Kumar later told reporters in Kathmandu, according to the Associated Press.
Nepalese authorities say they won’t extradite Kumar until they finish an investigation on whether he violated currency laws by not declaring $230,000 in cash and a check for $24,000 that he was carrying when arrested. He is scheduled to appear in a Nepalese court Sunday.
In another high-profile arrest, a renowned Chennai surgeon, Palani Ravichandran, was arrested in October in Mumbai for involvement in a kidney racket. He admitted to arranging organ transplants for wealthy foreigners – mainly from Persian Gulf states and Malaysia, whom he charged up to $25,000. Mumbai police say Ravichandran had performed between 40 and 100 illegal transplants since 2002.
Police say kidney donors can earn between $1,250 and $2,500, while recipients pay as much as $25,000, according to ActionAid India, an anti-poverty organization that has worked with kidney trade victims in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The same procedure can cost as much as $70,000 in China and $85,000 in the United States.
“These middlemen act more like cut-and-grab men whose only interest is to hack out the organ,” said Annie Thomas, a field co-coordinator for ActionAid in Chennai, formerly known as Madras. “This is a reprehensible abuse of the poor, and this practice needs to be curbed.”
Thomas says many middlemen typically masquerade the donors as relatives to circumvent the law while many foreigners in need of a kidney arrive on tourist visas rather than the required medical visas; some resort to false documents.

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