For the State has been witness to many such scandals, the most recent being in Tsunami Nagar, a fishing hamlet in north Chennai where women sold their kidneys for a song to keep the home fire burning after the families’ livelihood was affected. That was in January 2007. Sure, a few arrests were made. Nothing has been heard about the case since then.

This was followed by a more audacious case of a surgeon who reportedly conducted over 400 such surgeries in Chennai until he fell into the police net in Mumbai in October the same year. Dr Palani Ravichandran used the Kidney Diseases Institute of Organ Transplantation (KIOT), at St Thomas Hospital and the Bharathi Raja Hospital in Chennai to conduct transplants without mandatory approvals.

The recipients were from India as well as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Myanmar and the donors, mostly poor, from all parts  of India. In fact the arrest followed a complaint lodged by Jitu Vitthal Borkar (27), a daily wage worker, even as the Crime Branch CID in Tamil Nadu was looking for the doctor.

Borkar complained that a broker had promised him Rs 4 lakh for a kidney but was finally paid just Rs 25,000. He said he had been taken to Chennai and made to sign on “blank papers” by a lawyer. He was then taken to the St Thomas Hospital and his kidney harvested. Based on information provided by Borkar, the Mumbai police team got on to the kidney trail in Bharuch district of Gujarat and Chennai before picking up Dr Ravichandran and four others in Mumbai. According to the Mumbai police Dr Ravichandran’s patients were charged Rs 20 lakh for a kidney and the donors paid a meagre Rs 25,000.

Yet another case which followed Dr Ravichandran’s arrest shows how the rules are circumvented. The Chennai police picked up a 37-year-old accupuncture practitioner, Ramesh, running a private polyclinic in Vadapalani, on charges of acting as a tout and promising a donor, Uma, Rs 3 lakhs, but paying her Rs. 63,000. The kidney was meant for Maheswaran, a 50-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil, suffering renal failure. Initially, a well-known hospital in Mogappair refused to conduct the surgery as Maheshwaran is a Sri Lankan, whereas Uma is a Chennai resident and the two are not related. According to police, Ramesh then organised for Maheshwaran to take Uma to Sri Lanka, allegedly using forged documents, obtaining even a fake Lankan citizenship, to justify the claim that she had been working as a maid for him (Maheshwaran). Based on the new set of documents, the hospital then conducted the surgery, police said.

After the scandal in Tsunami Nagar in January 2007,  the Tamil Nadu government ordered a CB-CID enquiry, and also made a half-hearted attempt to crack down on many hospitals among the 54 which had licences to perform transplants. The government cancelled the licences of two hospitals and suspended the licences of 13 others in February. But soon, all the suspended licences were revoked and the hospitals were back in business.