KOCHI: As Crime Branch on Friday exposed fresh incidents of organ trade in Kerala, a similar case of organ trade racket that harvested vital organs from a 23-year-old accident victim in Kochi in 2009 still remains under the carpet with probe still reaching nowhere.Though probe into the incident was launched on multiple occasions by police, the investigation team couldn’t make much headway after the probe took the officers to doors of a few who have immense influence in the corridors of power.
“We collected statements from different government medical officers in connection with the incident. Every time we seek more details, the authorities concerned sit on our requests,” said a senior police officer, who handled the probe.The probe into the case took a surprising turn when Dr P Rema, senior professor of forensic medicine with Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College, made a disclosure on September 15, 2017 to the probe team that she had never attended the medical board which met under the then Ernakulam District Medical Officer (DMO) Haseena Mohammed between 2012 and 2014.
Police had to collect the statement of Rema after they found that it was this medical board, constituted in 2014 and which did not have a single neuro surgeon, that gave a clean chit to the doctors who were accused of organ harvesting.Even after Dr Rema gave a revealing statement to the police that “her name and signature were forged by the medical board to give clean chit to the doctors”, the investigation team couldn’t make much headway in the probe.
The case pertained to the incident in which Abhin V J, of Vazhaparambil House, Muvattupuzha, was denied treatment by two private hospitals for a head injury he suffered in a bike accident on December 2, 2009. After he was declared brain dead, his liver and two kidneys were harvested by a private hospital. The fraud came to light when the police surgeon, during autopsy, found that doctors had failed to treat a blood clot inside his head, leading to his death.