Nepal hands over kidney racket suspect to India

Kathmandu: The alleged leader of a syndicate
accused of illegally removing hundreds of kidneys,
sometimes from poor labourers held at gunpoint, was deported back to India on Saturday night from Nepal where he was arrested days earlier, officials said.

Nepalese authorities handed over Amit Kumar, the subject of an Interpol alert, to Indian officials who had been seeking his extradition since he wasarrested on Thursday at a jungle resort in neighbouring Nepal, said Upendra Aryal, a top police officer in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.

Kumar was using Nepal as a transit point and was attempting to flee to Canada where he owns a home, Nepali police said.

The Indian embassy here confirmed Kumar was
now in Indian custody.

"I have not committed any crime," the smartly dressed Kumar
shouted when he was hauled by police to a news conference in Kathmandu on Friday.

Police displayed several bundles of Indian and foreign currency they said amounted to over $200,000 they seized from Kumar at the news conference.

Authorities had been searching for the 43-year-old Kumar since last month, when he fled after Indian police said they broke up the kidney transplant racket they claimed he ran from an upscale New Delhi suburb.

Authorities believe his group sold up to 500 kidneys to
clients who travelled to India from around the world in the
past nine years.

Police were also investigating whether Kumar was involved
in illegal kidney transplants in Nepal, Aryal said.

Indian authorities declined to comment on the case.

Indian police say Kumar headed an illegal organ transplant
ring based in the affluent New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon.

Authorities believe his group sold up to 500 kidneys to
clients who travelled to India from around the world in the
past nine years.

Officials claim the racket spanned at least five Indian states and involved at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics, as well as a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids allegedly uncovered a kidney transplant
waiting list with 48 names.