Guwahati, Aug. 4: City police have busted an illegal organ transplant racket that involved removing kidneys from the poor and selling them to clients in Chennai.

Additional superintendent of police Jayshree Khersa said a member of the racket, identified as Jiten Malakar, 38, was arrested today and a case registered at Basistha police station.

The case (number 396/08) was registered under Sections 120 (A), 316, 307 IPC and Sections 18, 19 and 20 of Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994.

Malakar has been charged with criminal conspiracy, wrongful confinement and attempt to murder.

The accused, a resident of Hatigaon locality of the city, had been trapping poor people for kidney donation for the past few years, promising them money to the tune of Rs 2 lakh.

Malakar was remanded in five days’ police custody after he was produced in court this afternoon.

Members of the gang used to lure daily wage earners and rickshawpullers in Assam by promises of cash to part with their kidneys. They conducted the preliminary tests at a reputed private hospital in the city and if the blood group of the donor and that of the recipient matched, the victims were then sent to Chennai for the transplant. Later, the gang duped the victims by paying them only Rs 20,000 each.

The police have not revealed the names of the hospitals yet where the preliminary tests were conducted. They got the whiff of the racket after one of the victims, Sanjit Ghosh, a rickshawpuller, tipped them off.

Khersa said the gang had taken Ghosh to a hospital in Chennai and had his kidney removed a couple of years ago. “When Ghosh came to know that Malakar was again luring some persons, he went to the police,” she said.

After preliminary investigations, Malakar was picked up by the police last night and formally arrested after the case was registered this morning.

Another police official, said on condition of anonymity that they had identified two accomplices of Malakar, who are now absconding. “We have found four victims of the racket and recorded their statements. We will produce them in court as witnesses as they have agreed to turn approvers,” the officer said.

He said during interrogation, Malakar confessed to having taken several persons to Chennai for kidney transplant in the past four years. “Doctors and hospitals both in Guwahati and Chennai are suspected to be involved in the racket because it seems to be impossible for Malakar and other middlemen to carry out kidney transplants through fraudulent means without the connivance of hospital staff. However, we are not in a position to give further details as investigations are still on.”

Investigations revealed that a donor was admitted to the hospital as a relative of the patient in need of a kidney transplant.

Though the law says the donor can be a brain-dead patient, a close relative or an unrelated living donor, Section 19 of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, forbids exchange of any money between a donor and a recipient.

The unrelated donor has to file an affidavit in the court of a magistrate saying the organ is being donated out of love.