BHUBANESWAR: The Commissionerate Police, which formally registered a case in the latest kidney sale incident, is all set to send a team to Kolkata to seek details from the Kolkata-based Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) where the organ transplantation was conducted in September last year.
Police Commissioner Dr RP Sharma said a team will soon head out to Kolkata in this connection. “We are trying to ascertain how this transplant was carried out since it is a case of unrelated donors,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Badagarh police registered a case against Prashant Sahu, Susant Sahu and their sister Minati Sahu, the recipient. The Sahu brothers own a transport firm in the city.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Akshaya Kumar Mishra said charges under Sections 18/19/20 have been slapped against the three as well as a senior doctor of the hospital on the basis of the complaint.
Preliminary investigation has revealed that the victim Bulu Behera was projected as husband of the recipient to circumvent the legal process. In case of related donors, the organ donation does not have to go through the State Level Authorisation Committee, which is the highest body to accord permission after necessary verification.
In fact, this case appeared to be exactly the opposite of the second kidney sale incident that was reported from Cuttack where the donor, a woman, was projected as wife of the recipient in the Seven Hills Hospital of Visakhapatnam.
The hospital had accepted the documents provided by the patient without seeking its verification.
As per the law, in case of organ donation among spouses - if the transplantation is conducted in a hospital outside the State - the hospital must seek the marriage certificate, get it verified before asking for a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the home State. This apart, the hospital must also convene its authorisation committee and get the matter ratified.
However, all these procedures were overlooked in the first case and Commissionerate Police will ascertain from the Kolkata-based hospital if the norms were adhered to or not, Sharma said.
The police are also investigating if the victim had willingly agreed to donate his kidney though the complainant has stated that it was done without his knowledge and he had been asked to sign some documents for basic medical tests.
Behera’s wife, Jyotsna Rani, had mentioned in the FIR that the owners of the transport company had allegedly tricked her husband into the organ donation.
“If the documents at the hospital are not found to be satisfactory, we will have to quiz the doctor,” Mishra added.
This is the fourth case of illegal kidney transplantation in the twin-city in the last six months.