The AFU and Urban Legend Archive Medical Organ Theft organ theft asia Select a topic - - - - - - - - Home Searches AFU FAQ - - - - - - - - AFU Animals Books Celebrities Classic Collegiate Death Disney Drugs Food GIF Language Legal Medical Misc Movies Politics Products Religion Science Sex Songs TV - - - - - - - - Other sites

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: mike_holmans@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Mike Holmans")
Subject: Kidney stealing cite
Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 22:16:38 GMT

The following article appeared in the Observer, review section, p8, 19 May 1996. Monetary amounts have been converted to US$, at least in part because it looks as though they were converted from US$ to GBP for the purposes of original publication.

The author is Jenny Barraclough, producer of the BBC series Knife To The Heart.

WHOSE POUND OF FLESH?

In the central police station in Bangalore, a thin, wiry man was lifting up his shirt to show his scar. His wife and two children, dressed in their best, watched impassively. The man said he had gone to hospital to have his ulcer operated on, but when he came round he found his kidney had gone. he ended his impassioned account with tears in his eyes and the words; 'I don't want the money. Just give me my kidney back'. Police Chief Vincent D'Souza looked pleased - another victim to bolster his investigation, and a western film crew to witness his mastery of the case. It was the biggest investigation of his life.

In researching the story of stolen kidneys for our series on transplant surgery, we had heard of cases in Delhi, Bombay, and Bangalore. Only in Bangalore was there said to be strong evidence. In January 1995, Police Chief D'Souza had acalled an international press conference to announce that he had uncovered a criminal ring that stole illitereate people's kidneys for sale to the Middle East.

The world's press and the BBC#'s World Service carried the story. Within a week, another 80 people turned up at the police station to announce that they had had their kidneys stolen. Rumpour had it that government conversation of over $150,000 and a job for life were on offer. Soon the _Indian Express_ was reporting; 'Bangalore police have busted a massive racket in smuggling kidneys of nearly 1000 unsuspecting persons' and added 'prominent doctors were involved.'

The man who started the whole thing was a labourer called Velu from Tamil Nadu. He said he had been working near his village for 85c a day when he was approached by two agents who promised him a job in Bangalore earning twice as much. When he arrived, they told him an easy way to earn money was to sell blood, and they took him to the Yellama Desappa hospital.he said that when he was giving blood, he became unconscious. When he woke up, he found a large bandage on his side. He claimed the nephrologist, a Dr Siddaraju, told him he had become dizzy from loss of blood and fallen out of a first-floor window and hurt his side. [first-floor is the one up the stairs from the ground floor] He was given 5000 rupees ($75) and told to go home. 3 months later he had a fight with his brother and was punched in the stomach.

"I was in unbearable pain and went to a doctor who saw the mark and told me my kidney had been removed. I was amazed." He went back to demand "proper payment". He got no joy from the agents, nor from the doctors. A lawyer told him to go see D'Souza, who believed his story and decided to prosecute two doctors.

We went to visit the man D'Souza called "the architect of the whole racket", Dr Siddaraju. Siddaraju was professor of nephrology at the Victoria public hospital and also supervised kidney transplants at the private Yellama Desappa hospital. As criminal mastermminds went, Siddaraju did not seem to be a very rich one. His small bungalow was dilapidated and he washed in a water tank round the back; his living room had cheap furntiure, a tv set, exposed wires everywhere, a lot of statues of Buddha, and signs saying "God Is Love" and "To Work Is Divine". A large cupboard, permanently lit with dozens of candles, served as a shrine. Siddaraju was a religious man who, we later heard, had set up a clinic for poor kidney patients. He appeared respectable, unsophisticated, and still stunned by what had happened to him.

"At 11 o'clock at night, these police officers banged on my door. I assumed they'd come about an officer I'd operated on recently. But they said: 'Are you Siddaraju who does transplants? We have a case against you.' They refused to let me call anyone and snapped out my telephone wire and took me in my night shirt and bare feet - not even any slippers - to the police station. Is that the way you should treat a senior doctor in society? I was kept in a cell alone for 5 hours. I knew no reason why I was there."

Siddaraju was later granted bail, but it was 24 hours before he heard he was accused of stealing kidneys, wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy. By now, he was frightened. A lawyer friend advised him to become 'unavailable', so he 'disappeared' - to a friend's house - an act which the press made much of. It made him appear guilty and I asked him why he did it. "I knew what they could do to me. Practically everyone's afriad of the police in our country, I think." Siddaraju was suspended from the public hospital on half pay and the transplant work ceased completely. (He usually earned $900 a month.)

We visited the prosecuting counsel in the teeming Bangalore civil court. His office was filled to the ceiling with yellowing files and he looked like Omar Sharif. he popped out every now and again to chew betel nut and returned with a red mouth. He completely believed his client Velu's story. He had not interviewed any other witnesses; he was overworked and had no phone at home. However, his story differed from his client's. His version was that Velu had been told by the doctors that they had needed so much blood from him that they had decided to take it from his side, hence the scar. Later, Velu's own version - that he was told he'd fallen from the first-floor window -started to look shaky when we visitied the hospital. The windows had long been barred.

We met Velu out in his village. I asked why he hadn't realised for three months that the large mark on his side was a kidney scar when kidney-donating was quite common in his area. Had he never thought it odd that other people's scars were exactly like his own? He never noticed, he said.

Dr Siddaraju claimed that Velu could not have been unaware he was going to give a kidney. Over 10 days, he would have undergone a battery of tests - urine tests, x-rays, having his blood cross-matched together with the recipient, and then, before the operation, extensive shaving. He also insisted the doctor didn't have anything to do with paying the donor.

We later asked Dr Keshiva Reddy, a distinguished surgeon in Madras who runs a highly professional transplant programme, what he thought of the case. His answer was unequivocal: "Maybe the procedures in bangalore were lax, but it is quite impossible to steal someone's kidney without their knowledge. What's more, there's not exactly a shortage of donors. It's a sad commentary on our poverty, but it's a fact of life. Of course, people can be cheated financially, and perhaps that's what happened." Velu probably went home and realised he had been underpaid by the agents.

But what about the Middle Eastern connection? reddy laughed: "Arab patients certainly come over here for transplants, but the idea of shipping 1000s of kidneys over to the Gulf is nonsense. You have to use them immediately they have been taken from the donor. I think in this case the police may have been a bit too gullible."

It emerged that the world's press had carried a story which noone had bothered to check. (I was the first person who had asked Dr Siddaraju for his side of the story or questioned the evidence of the chief claimant.) The result has been damage to the reputation of the Indian medical profession, and the ruin of a probably innocent doctor's life.

It did something else even more serious. The kidney theft stories embarrassed the Indian govern,ment abroad and were said to be one reason for their recent ban on the sale of kidneys. In the West, the practice is viewed with extreme distaste. However, it is hard to maintain that view when you meet donors and recipients in person. In India, it is often the only way to save the lives of people in reanl failure. For a poor family, the going rate of $1000 means a lot and losing a kidney causes no harm.

Dr Reddy said: "In India, we spend $3 a year on each person's health. You in the wesst simply cannot judge us by your standards. These are voluntary transactions. They must be properly monitored, but if you ban them, people will die who could have lived, and an unsupervised black market will replace them."

Meanwhile Dr Siddaraju has not been paid since 29 January 1995. None of the half pay he was promised arrived, despite support from his peers. It could be another year before the court case is called and he is already down to the last of his savings.

[END]

Jenny Barraclough is producer of 'The Great Organ Hunt', to be shown on Tuesday 21st May at 2230 BST (GMT +1) on BBC1 as part of the series 'Knife To The Heart'

Mike "bans galore" Holmans