india

Updated: Jan 08, 2016 00:52 IST

Police in Telangana’s Nalgonda district are on the lookout for the kingpin and agents of a thriving racket that bought kidneys from local residents and sold them on the international market.

The kidney selling ring was busted on Wednesday after the arrest of 23-year Kasaparaju Suresh, a hotel management student in Hyderabad.

Sources said Suresh sold his kidney to a donor for Rs 5 lakh in December 2014 and thereafter turned into an agent, luring 15 more people who were taken to Colombo, where the surgeries were performed.

While the donor gets paid Rs 5 lakh and their travel, accommodation and other costs are taken care of, an agent can earn anywhere between `50,000 and Rs 1 lakh for each kidney, police said.

Many of these transactions were initiated online. Suresh, for example, was introduced to his agent on a website facilitating kidney donation, said Vikram Duggal, superindent of police, Nalgonda.

The donors were initially taken to a hospital in cities in Gujarat, such as Ahmedabad, where tests were conducted to ascertain their suitability for the donor.

Thereafter the agents arranged passport and visas for the donors to go to Sri Lanka. “The organ transplantation surgeries were performed at Nawalok Hospital, Western Hospital and Lankan Hospital based in Colombo,” Duggal said.

“There are some more cases that came to our notice and we are ascertaining the details. The actual list of donors sent by these agents could be bigger,” Duggal told HT. “We are coordinating with our counterparts in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to nab the kingpins in the racket and curb the practice.”