An oft repeated, sorry tale – reports of a kidney being stolen from a young man from a village who had come to Mumbai in search of a job.

Here is one such story. This young man left his village in Bihar with dreams of going to Saudi Arabia and making a better life for himself. In spite of paying up the required sum, the trip did not materialize. He said that he was then taken to Ranchi to undergo medical tests. The next thing he knew was that he was back in Mumbai, minus a kidney (distance between Ranchi and Mumbai is over 2000 kms and it is a mystery how he was shifted to Mumbai in an unconscious state!). He filed a complaint suit in the Mumbai City Court after which five persons were arrested.

The truth, of course, goes much deeper than that. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) which also instituted an inquiry into the incident said that it was an open secret that commercial transactions had been regularly taking place between patients suffering from chronic renal failure who needed kidney transplantation and the poor who were willing to sell their kidneys. All such transactions are illegal and punishable under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA), 1994, but the buying and selling continues. In the process the donor gets taken for a ride, gets paid a pittance and by the time he wakes up, it is too late as in this case.