Kerala filmmaker suspects organ sale lead to cousin's death; police launches probe

Close on the heels of Kerala police finding preliminary evidences for illegal organ trade in Kerala, an award-winning filmmaker has came out with a suspicion that his cousin had sold her liver for Rs 10 lakh at a private hospital in Kochi.

Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, an award-winning film maker, has raised the suspicion as his cousin died last week. A police probe was ordered into the allegation.

Sasidharan's father's niece, Sandhya, 40, died in Thiruvananthapuram on November 7. She was under treatment for Covid-19 and was discharged after being tested negative. But her condition worsened and she was hosptialised again and she died.

Sasidharan said in a social media post that he became suspicious about her death after noticing some unnatural marks on her body and the reluctance of the police to properly note the marks despite the relatives raising suspicion. On subsequent enquiry, he came to know that Sandhya sold her liver for Rs 10 lakh for a patient at a private hospital in Kochi in 2018.

Sasidharan also said in the post that Sandhya's daughter told him that Sandhya forced her to sign the consent form by threatening to take her own life. Sandhya, who hailed from a financially weak background, was having kidney and heart ailments. Even then how did the hospital authorities made her donate organ, he asked.

Based on a petition given by Sasidharan, state police chief Loknath Behera ordered a probe by the Thiruvananthapuram rural district police chief into the matter.

Meanwhile, the private hospital authorities said that the organ transplant was done by following all formal procedures and the donor had even turned up for review twice and she was also found to be healthy. The hospital authorities also denied the allegations of organ trade.

The allegations raised by Sasidharan assumed significance as the Kerala police recently launched a probe into organ trade rackets thriving in the state after a preliminary investigation came across middlemen wooing people form weaker backgrounds to donate organs for cash. The preliminary investigation found that donors from weaker sections were suspected to be induced by middlemen for donating organs, mainly liver and kidney, to patients from well to do backgrounds by offering a price of up to Rs 10 lakh. But the actual cash transaction involved in the trade could be manifold and a major chuck could be going to middlemen and hospitals involved in the racket.