Kidney racket link in city hospital

Caesar Mandal / TNN / Feb 24, 2008, 03:30 IST

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Arrested couple have named a Chennai contact, who, police suspect, is the missing link between the donors and the recipients.

KOLKATA: Meet Shila Mandal: bed 238, Woodlands hospital. On February 20, Shila had her kidney removed in an operation. She is currently under the care of Dr Lalit Kumar Agarwal in the hospital.
Shila��s name has also cropped up in the kidney racket busted in Barasat on Friday. Police had arrested husband-wife duo Dilip and Putul Sen and were on the lookout for Shila and her husband Bhabatosh �� both "missing" in police files.
Police claimed Dilip and Putul had sold their kidneys to an organ racket and were involved in luring others to sell their kidneys for a price.Did Shila do the same?
Woodlands CEO Ashis Banerjee said, "The formalities for kidney donation were completed in December 2007. But we don��t know if the woman had done it for money. We have already informed Alipore police about the case."

Dilip and Putul have divulged the name of a Chennai contact, who, police suspect, is the missing link between the "donors" and the recipients. Dilip claimed he has never met this person, but only spoke to him on the phone.
Dilip allegedly acted as an agent, identifying poor families in the Barasat locality and luring them into selling their kidneys. He may have linked up with Sukumar Das and Bhabatosh to run the racket. Both his associates vanished soon after Dilip and Putul were arrested on Friday.

Though Dilip and Putul initially claimed that they had donated their organs, they broke down later and admitted to having sold their kidneys. They had even lured others into selling their organs. Sukumar Das, an ex-employee of Barasat Municipality, was one of them. About six months ago, Dilip saw that he was bankrupt and allegedly coaxed him into selling his kidney.
Sleuths are desperate to trace the Chennai connection as the man might have had links to a similar racket police busted in Serampore in 2003. Acting on a tip-off from a PCO booth owner, police had arrested Ramkrishna Samanta, an agent.
Samanta had admitted that he was working for one Laltu Roy, a retired BSF constable from Barrackpore in North 24-Parganas. Laltu, in turn, was in touch with a Chennai-based man. Police though failed to trace Laltu.
Soon after the Sens�� arrest on Friday, locals from Barasat��s Bijaynagar told police that they had been approached to sell their kidneys. But these ��agents��, too, had vanished since Friday evening. Incidentally, Dilip used to stay in
Bijaynagar earlier.
"The arrests prove that such rackets are operating on the outskirts of the city and a group of powerful men is running the entire ring," said a senior police officer.
Police are now on the lookout for the missing. "We have arrested the couple and are probing all possible aspects of the case," said Supratim Sarkar, SP, North 24-Parganas.

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