Amritsar kidney racket: 4 sentenced to 5-yr jail term

Four persons were sentenced to five years' imprisonment by a local court in the infamous kidney scam unearthed by the Punjab Police in 2002.
Additional Sessions Judge Sham Lal yesterday sentenced Ajay Kumar, Surinder Singh, Tarsem Singh, all hailing from Punjab, and Gurinder Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, to five year jail term and slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them.
The court acquitted two persons -- Advocate Rajan Puri and Kala Singh -- citing lack of evidence against them.
It also declared three accused -- Rajesh Kumar, resident of Kanpur, Vicky Bhatia from Amritsar, and Rafiq Mohammed hailing from Srinagar -- as absconding.

Criminal cases were registered on March 16, 2008 here against all the accused in connection with preparing fake documents for kidney donors and recipients and for running an illegal kidney racket.
During search operations in the city in 2008, police had arrested the six accused from Hussain Pura locality in Amritsar and recovered several fake documents, government rubber stamps, fake degree certificates and fake ration cards from them.

The accused had allegedly lured poor people to donate or sell their kidneys while paying hefty money on the basis of fake documents. They had also prepared fake certificate for minor donors wherein they were shown to be adults.

On November 2, last year, court had awarded eight years imprisonment to former Police inspector Suresh Kumar from Haryana, and sentenced five doctors to five-year jail term, in connection with the kidney racket.
Additional District Session Judge G S Bakshi had held former Government Medical College (GMC) Principal Dr O P Mahajan, the then Head of Forensic Department of GMC Dr Jagdish Gargi, Dr S K Grover, Dr H S Bhutani and Dr Rajinder Singh, besides Kumar guilty.
Kumar had allegedly got a kidney transplanted by illegitimate means with the help of the convicted doctors.