Three held in kidney transplant racket S Ahmed Ali/Tnn  May 7,2005 Mumbai: The Mahim police on Thursday arrested three persons, including a local pathologist, in connection with an inter-state kidney transplant racket.     Javed Sarvar Khan (28) and Mohammed Zuber Khan (32), both alleged touts, were arrested along with Dr Pravin Gujarathi, who runs a pathology laboratory on the Lady Jamshedji Road.     The racket came to light after 33-year-old Srinivas Rao, who worked as an oddjob man with a catering agency, filed a complaint at Mahim police station last week.      In January 2004, the Mumbai police had busted a gang comprising touts and a nephrologist with Bombay Hospital for cheating poor, unemployed youths into donating their kidneys for paltry sums. At times, the donors were not even given the money.     Rao’s case seems to be no different. He had come to Mumbai last year in search of a job. After failing to secure one for over a month, he started hanging around restaurants near Mahim dargah where the poor are fed free meals. It was here that Javed Khan and Zuber Khan spotted him and lured him with the promise of a good job and money.      Senior inspector of the Mahim police station, Joe Gaikwad, told TOI that “the two accused told Rao he would get Rs 3 lakh and some perks if he donated a kidney.’’     On April 7, when Rao agreed to the proposal, the two accused bought him some clothes and a pair of shoes, and took him to Dr Gujarathi’s laboratory for diagnostic tests.     Investigating officer V Bankar said tests related to kidney functioning and transplant have to be prescribed by a doctor, but Dr Gujarathi didn’t ask for a prescription. Bankar added that Dr Gujarathi seemed to know the accused well.     Neelam Gujarathi, wife of the accused doctor, maintained he was unaware of the racket and had just conducted some routine tests at the patient’s request.      The touts then put Rao on a flight to Delhi. At Delhi airport, he was received by two agents who bundled him off in a taxi and drugged him with a spiked soft drink.      “When I regained conciousness, I was in a nursing home where a doctor, who was a white man, attended to me. There were stiches on the left side of my abdomen,’’ Rao told this correspondent. “The next day, they put me on a Delhi-Vijawada train. They didn’t give me any money and that’s why I came to Mumbai in search of the two touts.’’     The police are searching for the recipient of the kidney and three Delhi-based doctors who conducted the transplant operation.  How illegal transplants went out of Mumbai  Mumbai: Before January 2004, when the Mumbai police, with its phone-tapping skills, unearthed an illegal kidney trade racket, patients with kidney failure who had the means simply “bought’’ the organ in the black market. Post the bust-up, a leading nephrologist admitted that every months a few patients would go to other cities that were “more liberal’’ to shop for a kidney and a transplant. “A few months ago, three of my patients within a span of few weeks went to Chennai,’’ the doctor told TOI under condition of anonymity.      The other cities that desperate patients—numbed after repeated dialysis and the money strain—would visit included Nandiyal, Ranchi and New Delhi, say city doctors. “The number going to Nandiyal has dropped in recent times, but Chennai has picked up.’’ Incidentally, even the World Health Organisation had picked up Chennai as the top-ranker in the illegal kidney trade a few years ago.     However, there is worse. According to a government official, some doctors from Mumbai are known to zip across to other states to conduct transplants. “So, patients from Mumbai are sent to other cities that don’t have such stringent rules to perform operations involving such rackets.’’ TNN