KOCHI: Filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan on Tuesday approached the Kerala High Court seeking a directive to hand over the case registered by the Neyyattinkara police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for an effective investigation of the 'mysterious' death of his cousin Sandhya.
Alleging foul play by the organ trade mafia, he also sought a directive to the Superintendent, Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, to conduct the autopsy of the deceased under the aegis of an expert team of doctors before her body is cremated.
In the petition, Sanal Kumar submitted that Sandhya, who had recovered from COVID-19, was healthy before her sudden demise at the district hospital, Neyyattinkara, on November 7. Radhakrishnan, the brother of the deceased, rushed to the hospital on hearing the information and found contusions and abrasions on her right forehand and neck.
Meanwhile, the family members understood that Sandhya had donated her organs by her own will and without the knowledge of her relatives. According to the petition, she had donated one kidney at Aster Medicity and received only an amount of Rs 2 lakh. The deceased who was suffering from heart and kidney ailments even from childhood is medically unfit for organ donation. Nevertheless, she was lured with money by the organ trade mafia. She cannot be a donor of organs under Section 13 of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Acts. The organ trade mafia at the behest of hospitals has to be busted, said the petitioner.
Aster Medicity came out with a public statement that the deceased on her own volition came to the hospital and underwent donor hepatectomy in 2018. The family members of the deceased suspect that the organ transplant mafia was involved and filed complaints before the state police chief. The police chief ordered an inquiry into the allegation of the mysterious death of the deceased linked to the organ trade mafia. However, no investigations were conducted so far on the organ trade mafia due to the influence of Aster Medicity, alleged the petitioner.
The police as well as medical officers were hell-bent on cremating the body to scuttle the investigation, he said, adding that the matter requires investigation by a centralised agency.