Ayurvedic practitioner Dr Santosh Raut, who was booked twice in kidney rackets in Mumbai, first in 1995 and then again in 2008, was picked up again by the Gujarat police from Delhi in connection with illegal harvesting of organs.
Dr Raut, who moved base to Gurgaon a little over two years ago, was picked up after the Gujarat police found seven men in a village in Anand district who had undergone surgeries in Delhi to remove their kidneys in exchange for cash.
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Dr Raut has allegedly been involved in over a thousand illegal kidney transplants and is the linchpin of an international ring spread across India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal.
Also Read:?Delhi Police Busts International Kidney Racket, Two Held
Dr Raut was arrested from an apartment in Gurgaon, where he had been residing after assuming a new name Dr Amit Raut. Till late on Thursday, Gujarat police maintained that the person arrested by them was Dr Amit Raut and that they had no knowledge of any person named Dr Santosh Raut.
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Gujarat police registered a case in March after they came across newspaper advertisements inviting those in need of a kidney transplant to Pandoli village in Petlad taluka of Anand district. Investigation revealed seven poor labourers from the village had been taken to Delhi and their kidneys removed for as little as Rs 50,000.
Before Dr Raut was picked up, Anand police had already made three arrests in the village - Rafique Jadya alias Ahmedbhai Vora, who sold his kidney and then joined the gang to trap more gullible villagers; and two agents Mukul Chaudhary and Sher Ali Khan Pathan. "The victims said they were taken to Delhi, Chennai and Sri Lanka and promised fast compensations and jobs," said Inspector Haresh Vora of the Anand Crime Branch.
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During interrogation of Jadya, Chaudhary and Pathan, Dr Raut's name cropped up. Dr Raut, probe revealed, had an agent based out of Mumbai who would identify those in dire need of a kidney. The Gujarat police identified this agent as Javed Khan. "We had been hunting for Raut since long. When we found that he would visit his Gurgaon flat on July 26, a trap was laid and he was picked up," said Superintendent of Police Saurabh Singh.
The first case against Dr Santosh Raut was registered in February 1995 for carrying out illegal transplants at Kaushalya Nursing Home on Linking Road, Khar west. Rakesh Maria, who was then a deputy commissioner at Crime Branch, said: "It was one of the first-of-its-kind case.
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Till then no one knew such a racket existed in the city. Based on that case, the state government enacted a legislation for kidney transplants." Singh said it is sad that Dr Raut was allowed to carry out the illegal activity at some other place."It's shocking and sad. Our law has not been able to check him. Every time he gets bail, shifts to another location and carries on. He's not a nephrologist. I have interrogated him personally."
In February 2008, CBI arrested Raut in connection with a case registered a month earlier.
The racket came to light when a joint team of the UP and Haryana police raided his clinic in Gurgaon. But Raut managed to give them the slip and flee to Nepal. Later, he was arrested from a hotel in Kathmandu with the help of Nepalese authorities. CBI officials had information that Raut and his associates tricked poor people to sell their kidneys and then sold the organs to patients in Europe and US, Greece, Lebanon, Canada, Saudi Arabia and UAE.
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The clinic that was raided in Gurgaon acted as a makeshift operation theatre for the illegal transplants carried out by Raut.
Nepal police too were on the lookout for Raut as many Nepalese nationals had been duped of their kidneys in the alleged racket run by him and his brother Jeevan.
Raut was booked under several IPC sections, including those for cheating, criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means.He was also booked under the Human Organ Transplant Act, 1994.